Monster Party Book 5: Forgive me my mistakes, I'm only human
by James Firecat
Summary: Another Fey hunt is about to begin thanks to the Tepest Inquisition, and a seemingly innocent woman may soon be fed to the flames, but what is the accuser is in just as much peril as the accused?
1. Chapter 1

Monster Party Book 5: Forgive me my mistakes, I'm only human.

Chapter One: Into the woods, it's time to go.

Six adventurers stood looking down at one small unimportant looking rock. They stood on one side of that rock in the nation of Nova Vaasa where the church of the Lawgiver gave out holy pronouncements in exchange for mortal wealth and power.

On the other side of the rock was Tepest, where spiritual matters were treated in an all together more dreadfully earnest fashion.

Precautions had to be taken before they entered Tepest against ALL its inhabitants.

"Hat check James." Demanded Alexander Diamondclaw a tall man with a green left eye and a right one which was covered by a black eye-patch. He wore full body black outfit of a vaguely martial design which had a few strange silver runes upon it along with black gloves and boots.

James Firecat to all appearances a normal (if extremely energetic) young man in a bright red outfit who began to tug away at the wide brimmed hat he wore. No matter how he strained or pulled it remained planted firmly in place. The most information one could be sure of about his head above the brow line was that he had bright red hanging down the back of his neck.

"Won't come loose." James Firecat eventually admitted.

"It is like I told you Boss, fast drying, hard setting, and completely waterproof. That adhesive won't come loose until its mixed with the proper solvent." Boasted Callan "Cal" Wright the group's alchemist.

He was dressed in a simple enough brown cloak and pants, though it was possible to see he had on a red tie and blue shirt beneath it. A pair of blue lenses rested across his face at the moment.

"Florence, Mirri, how are you doing?" Alexander inquired.

"Well enough Sir, but do I really have to wear these stupid things?" Demanded Mirri Catwarrior a somewhat fair skinned woman with midnight black hair. She was wearing a white jacket and black pants, along with a white hat and gloves.

At the moment her eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark lenses.

"We're going into Tepest, you tell me." Alexander answered.

Mirri hung her head and sulked, idly fingering her glasses all the while. Looking closer one could see that they unlike Cal's they had noticeable ear straps to make sure the lenses could not be removed quickly either by accident or on purpose.

"How am I supposed to talk to people if they don't have a reason to trust me?" She muttered to herself.

"Glasses come off a lot quicker than hair regrows." Muttered Florence Bastien, a bald woman in a green leotard like outfit whose skin was exactly the same shade as Mirri's.

"You're not the only one with hair problems..." Muttered Alexander Diamondclaw whose shoulder length blond hair was ragged and untidy in a manner suggesting it had recently been much longer.

"How are your ears Devi?" Cal asked turning to the other female member of the group.

Devi Skye was a brown haired woman wearing blue dress with blue gloves on who had a flail wrapped around her right arm. Said arm casually stroked the ears that emerged from her brown hair.

"Round and ineffectual. Exactly like those of every human in the world. Sadly because my lifespan is to be measured in only two digits worth of years I'm doomed to die before I have time to fully contemplate even such obviously inadequacies." She moaned in overwrought anguish.

"I know it is a little hypocritical of me to ask this at the moment... but are you guys really sure we should do this? I mean I hear Barovia is lovely this time of year! It's not like Strahd Von Zarovich has time to try and personally slay every single group of adventurers who wander into his domain…

Not only that, but we'd only have to watch out for one guy! If we go to Tepest, then we're going to be heading into a land where every single villager will be trying to burned me the stake just because I understand how to properly combine saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal without reducing myself to a fine mist." The alchemist grumbled.

Alexander responded by simply placing a firm hand on Cal's shoulder.

"The places that need us most often want us least. Now lets head on in..." Alexander commanded and slowly the half a dozen adventurers passed the rock, passed from the open plains of Nova Vaasa and into the shadowy forests of Tepest.

XXX XXX XXX

As the six adventures made made their way way along the forest path the weather began to take a turn for the worse. Rain cascaded from the iron-gray sky, large droplets splattering against the group's clothing. Not even the thickly growing trees provided enough cover and bit by bit the road began to transform from dirt to mud.

"By the way Cal, you did a good job on our clothes." Alexander admitted as he watched another droplet roll off of his black outfit.

"What can I say, I love my work, or at least I love being dry." The alchemist reflected.

Sure enough, the mixtures he'd recently applied to all of the group's clothing was causing the water to slide right off it, rather than dampening both fabric and the flesh beneath.

"Do you think we should find a place to camp until the rain dies down?" Devi suggested carefully turning her gaze this way and that for any sort of obvious source of shelter.

Another drop of rain fell a few feet in front of Alexander. It splattered against seemingly nothing at all, and the blond haired man's single eye widened at the sight.

"Trap line... Rest will have to wait Devi..." He warned as he reached back and drew forth the two handed longsword from the sheath strapped to his back.

Scant seconds after the blade had been drawn he had need of it, as half a dozen arrows came shooting out of the forest. Alexander's twisted, dodged, and blocked as best he could, and luckily their crude (but hardly less dangerous for it) stone arrowheads bit only cloth instead of flesh.

Even as the sound of whistling arrows still hung in the air, war cries began to fill the forest. Dark creatures surged forward from the trees charging at the group from all sides. The six were beset by feral-looking creatures who stood little more than a single yard tall with bulging black eyes and mouths full of jagged teeth, their leathery skin made them look like some sort of cross between halflings and lizards.

Each of the beast men wielded a crude stone-tipped spear and road upon a great slavering wolves with evil intelligent eyes.

Alexander took one look upon their assailants' mounts and his expression changed from stoic determination to boiling rage.

"Oh you snaggletoothed bastards." He growled and promptly charged forward himself.

Off the beaten path the footing was ironically slightly superior (or at the very least, firmer) since grass absorbed the rainfall better than bare earth. Alexander and two of the mounted monsters made a beeline for one another.

A spear made of half rotted wood was thrust forward and promptly sliced in half. While his attention was focused on that task however the other rider urged his mount to pounce upon the adventure. The twisted wolf beast was already salivating at the prospect of a kill and needed precious little encouragement.

Even with the benefit of Cal's alchemical mixtures his gloves had not been rendered completely immune to the rain. Droplets of water still rested upon the fabric, and they rendered his blade's hilt more slippery than normal. Alexander had no time to be horrified at the sight of Wolfclaw slipping free from his hands as the weight of the beast sent him skidding across the wet ground.

Instead, the blond haired man rolled with the impact, and used the momentum that it had imparted upon him to turn himself over.

Which just meant that he had a chance to clearly see the half insane eyes of a beast while its teeth closed in on his throat.

His body twisting about the wet grass like a snake Alexander managed to work one of his legs out from under the monstrous wolf and lashed out with a powerful kick. It was not aimed at the beast itself, but at the equally bestial creature upon its back.

It had been riding with neither reigns nor stirrups, and thus had nothing to cling to but its mount's fur. All that ended up accomplishing was filling its hands with gray hair as in fell to the ground.

Alexander grabbed the dismounted rider by its bald head, and squeezed.

There was a horrible crunching sound and then he shoved the unresisting monster into its former mount's mouth. The wolf monster was for a brief moment sated by the prospect of having something to eat and Alexander was able to roll his entire body out from under it. At which point he quickly started to scan the area for the first of the beastmen to have attacked him.

The orange and black skinned beastman was currently trying to abscond with Alexander's sword, though it was somewhat hampered by the fact that the blade was a great deal longer than it was tall.

It had managed to get it off the ground, but was still trying to sort out exactly how to wield it without accidentally harming its mount in the process.

"You are just full of bad decisions today..." Alexander growled under his breath.

With one well placed jump he propelled himself through the air and landed on the second lupine monster's back, smashing the sword thief to the ground in the process, an unpleasantly fatal sound accompanying his impact.

"As for you..." He growled before rolling over the side of the wolf monster itself, his hands seizing two of the thing's legs.

Alexander rose to his full height and in a display of heroic strength managed to lift the wolf monster off the ground, twist it about, and hurl against a nearby trees. The beast let loose with a howl of anguish as the impact clearly broke several of its bones.

By this time the other of his original four legged opponents had finished feasting upon its former rider and was ready to slay something else. It bounded towards Alexander, but the green eyed man responded with well crafted kick, which knocked his fallen sword back up into the air.

"Sorry about that." He apologized to Wolfclaw before promptly using it to cleave the four legged beast in half.

All four of his foes dealt with, Alexander was able to take stock of the situation, and shift his stance in time to block another stone tipped arrow.

A second later there was a sharp "CRACK" which had nothing to do with lightning despite how overcast the sky was. A bow fell from limp hands as one beastman's unpleasant face became uglier still with the addition of a bullet hole.

Cal Wright stood in the middle of a triangle of James Firecat, Devi, Sky, and Florence Bastien, fighting with knives, flail, and a wooden staff respectfully, united by the single goal of keeping the monsters away from him. So long as the monsters couldn't get within reach of him the alchemist was able to reap a terrible harvest with his personally crafted breech-loading firearm Phoenix.

The rain proved no impediment to his weapon, and every time it spoke it made a convincing argument for why one of Cal's foes should currently be laying flat on the ground never to rise again. Their attackers had managed to surround the group, but in the process somehow they had lost track of one of its members.

Another archer was just starting to draw a bead upon Alexander when a pair of white gloved hands seized it from behind.

"No." A feminine voice whispered, and soon the bow fell from limp hands and the beastman's limp body fell to the ground.

Then there was a cruel laugh and then Mirri Catwarrior darted back behind the nearest tree.

As she did so another group of six "wolf" mounted beastmen bounded into sight and began to charge Alexander.

The blond haired man stood his ground, Wolf Claw at the ready.

Despite their losses the bestial creatures continued to press the attack. They hissed and snarled, stabbing at Alexander, in such a rush to stain their weapons with his blood that they got in each others' way.

For all their lack of discipline they were still dreadfully earnest, there was a shared a look in their eyes which suggested they would rather die than let any of the group escape.

Then above the din of battle it was possible to hear a bugle blare and hoof-beats draw near. A sleek gray steed suddenly burst from the fog, its rider clad in midnight hues and holding a gleaming saber aloft.

His weapon came down swiftly cleaving yet another of the beastmen in twain.

"This way men, the goblins have taken the bait!" He cried out exuberantly as his a kick form his horse's iron shod hooves caved in the skull of the wolf beast whose rider he had slain a moment ago.

The beastmens' fierce determination vanished as quickly as they themselves had arrived. Those archers who were still alive began to fade back into the forests, while the riders and mounts alike began to beat a retreat so slapdash that several more of them were promptly slain.

As the last of the creatures vanished from sight the rider pulled up his horse next to Alexander and carefully swung off it.

"You lot are lucky I came along when I did. Goblins will fight to the death, but only as long as they think it's their own idea. You make em think that they're the ones being trapped and they'll turn run for the hills, even if you're only bluffing." He explained.

That particular bit of advice certainly seemed to be accurate given that there were no neither sight nor sound of other horsemen nearby.

"They grow meaner stronger goblins in Tepest than in most other lands." Alexander admitted.

Their rescuer then pulled back his hood revealing himself to be a man in his early twenties with slightly disheveled blond hair.

"I'm Ivan D'Ogmai, originally of Darkon, though I've been calling Tepest home of late. I see by your dress that you're strangers here too. Well, let me warn you, there are worse monsters than goblins in Tepest. Mind your step when you deal with the folk around here as well. They're the most suspicious people I've ever met." Ivan forewarned them.

Alexander looked at the recently slain bodies of several goblins and wolf beasts that now littered the path.

"These creatures smelled foul enough when they were alive, death is not likely to improve their scent much. Why don't we head a little ways further down this road before we do any more talking?" Alexander suggested.

Ivan seemed somewhat taken aback by Alexander's words, but with a shrug of his shoulders he acquiesced and began to lead his horse back the way he'd come.

"Just so long as you don't expect us to go all the way to Viktal... I'm not exactly welcome there at the moment." The black haired man answered.

"You know Boss, it is rapidly starting to sound like our new friend is a lot more in need of 'rescuing' than we are, maybe he helped set up that goblin ambush and then..." Cal Wright would have continued in that particular vein but Devi drove an elbow firmly into his midsection silencing him for the moment.

"You'll have to forgive my alchemist, the plain and simple fact is that there's no one more suspicious than him in the entire Core." Alexander apologized.

Ivan shot a wary glance in Cal's direction and then sighed.

"He does have the right of it, somewhat at least. Not that I'd have anything to do with those beasts, or that I am personally in danger... but I am rather desperately in need of some rescuers, otherwise I wouldn't be out on the road in the middle of this downpour." He admitted.

"Best to start at the beginning, who actually is in need of rescuing?" Alexander inquired.

"Bryonna of Viktal... the woman I love with all my heart. At the moment she languishes in the city jail under the false charge of being in league with, if not actually among the fey! When I heard the charge announced... I... went out of my mind with anger.

Before I knew it, two of the city's inquisitors wound up loosing a few of their teeth, and I just barley managed to flee the village in time to avoid being imprisoned alongside her." Ivan reflected sourly.

"So your response to having your girlfriend charged with a crime that she's completely innocent of was to see to it that you became completely guilty of a few yourself? I think you need..." Cal never managed to finish that particular suggestion though, because Mirri and Devi both elbowed him in the chest in unison, the two women striking from opposite sides of his body.

"I realize that I acted rashly, foolishly, stupidly... but nothing can undo the deed now that it is done. All that matters is that Bryonna is innocent, and you... have you ever found yourself faced with an injustice so great that you felt no man worthy of the name could act rationally in the face of it?" He pleaded with Alexander.

A single green eye very pointedly refused to meet Ivan's gaze.

In fact, it looked for a moment as if Alexander was tempted to take a few quick steps and leave the darkoneese merchant turned outlaw facing only the black fabric of his eye-patch.

"So long as no one died by your hand, then I'll withhold my judgment." Was all he said.

Ivan seemed to hardly have expected more from Alexander and so he could only shake his head mournfully.

"It is all so stupid you know... the people of Viktal, they're nice enough... but they're scared out of their wits by the 'fey' and sometimes I don't think they don't even know what a 'fey' actually is!

I mean, I grew up in Darkon, I've met elves and dwarfs, yes they live longer than we do, look a little different, but deep down, they're the same as us. Sure there are goblins in these woods and they'd kill you just as soon as look at you... but... I just have a hard time believing their stories of all the evil the fey cause. I've never seen something a fey supposedly did that couldn't have another more logical explanation." Ivan admitted.

Alexander sighed, and mournfully shook his head.

"You had best start believing in fey stories Mister D'Ogmai... you're in one." The green eyed man declared, as he removed his eye-patch.

There was a very long silence as Ivan drank in the sight before him.

"You... ahh... urr... ohh..." He babbled unable to formulate a coherent response.

Alexander just smiled at the sight of how uncomfortable he'd made Ivan before sliding his eye-patch back on and placing a comforting hand on the other man's shoulder.

"Don't worry, even if you don't believe in the fey yet, I know at least one who believes in you. Now tell me, would you prefer I work over your stomach or your head? I would personally suggest head, it looks much more impressive that way and once you've had one good blow to it you can barely feel the others." He asked in a strangely jovial voice.

End Chapter


	2. Chapter 2

Monster Party Book Five: Forgive me my mistakes, I'm only human.

Chapter Two: The inquisition, lets begin! The inquisition, look out sin!

"What?" Ivan spluttered unable to make sense of what he'd just heard.

"Stomach or head? I've knocked men out either way, I was just wondering where you wanted me to strike you." Alexander repeated the offer.

"What are you talking about?" Ivan repeated, feeling completely and utterly lost.

Alexander lazily draped one of his arms across the shoulder of the Darkoneese merchant in a show of camaraderie.

"Look, you've told us that the Tepestani are just a bit paranoid and superstitious to say the least. Suppose half a dozen strangers just waltz into Viktal and immediately poke our noose into the matter, how do you imagine that will go down?

'I say, hear you have got a fey you'd like to burn, would you mind telling me everything you know about the case? Why do I want to know? Just everyday curiosity, why, is that really so hard to believe..?' We're more likely to end up joining your lady love on the pyre than we are to save her.

That said, if when we first entered the village, we do them some great service, like say, capturing a wanted fugitive…. In that case we'd have an 'in' to the whole mater. Any questions we asked would simply be about us wanting to tie up any possible loose ends!" Alexander explained.

Ivan's face flashed through several different expressions at a breakneck pace; revulsion, confusion, comprehension, and a strange mix of hatred and admiration.

"You've a real clever bastard, has anyone ever told you that?" Ivan replied.

"It has been a while since I've gotten to practice my Tepestani, was the emphasis in your last sentence supposed to be on 'clever' or 'bastard', I couldn't tell." Alexander couldn't help but ask.

"Bastard." Ivan clarified.

"Sounds about right." Alexander agreed, taking a moment to examine his gloves.

"Still, like I said, if we're going to have a chance to rescue Bryonna, our best bet is to imprison you. The good news is if that she's found innocent then I'm sure we'll be able to convince them to drop the charges against you as well.

Once we manage to find the true villain behind the matter, we'll just add bewitching you into trying to free Bryonna to their list of crimes." Alexander promised.

"You know, back when this conversation started I was going to offer you what few coins I had stashed away... after hearing your current plan however..." Ivan just sort of let the comment drift off at that point.

"Oh no, wouldn't hear of it, reuniting young lovers is a privilege. So… Stomach or head?"

"Before you do anything that might impair my ability to speak, there's something else you need to know. The woman who accused my Bryonna, her name is Lorelei, she's a beautiful lass, but either her heart or head is in the wrong place. She claims that Bryonna used some sort of fowl fey magic to make me fall in love with her. I think she's just upset that we used to be sweethearts before I realized there's more to a girl than how she looks.

The problem is that she's the daughter of Wyan, the priest in charge of the Fey Hunts. So between that, and the fact that Bryonna got herself a nasty scar from when her parents were killed by goblins and she spent a lot of time out in the forest being raised by a Vistana… well people who should know better are still all too ready to think the worst of her." Ivan warned.

Alexander sighed heavily.

"Stomach or head?" He repeated, clearly refusing to address such otherwise important details at the moment.

"Head." Ivan decided.

Alexander floored him with one blow.

XXX XXX XX

"So, I am given to understand that you are the 'bounty hunter' who managed to capture Ivan D'Ogmai?" Inquired a man with noticeably graying hair residing above his neatly trimmed beard and large (if well cared for) mustache.

He was dressed in ornate vestments including a cloth cap of some sort that covered most but hardly all of his hair.

Sure enough, simply handing Ivan over to the local forces of law and order before heading back to their newly acquired rooms at the Fisherman's Rest tavern had brought one of their leaders to Alexander's door.

The only downside was that the simple room was now seeming to be extremely crowded between Alexander Diamondclaw, Florence Bastien, and the five newly arrived Inquisitors.

"One of several, but I'm their leader. In turn I believe you're Wyan of Viktal, commander of the Tepestani Inquisitor?" Alexander greeted the man cordially.

"I hardly control the Inquisition throughout all of Tepest, I am only in direct command of the inquisition in Viktal, though those from other places sometimes choose to seek my advice. You have the advantage of me though, while you have heard of me I know nothing of you." Wyan reminded the adventurer.

"Where do you come from?" One of the other inquisitors demanded in a much more brisk tone.

"Nova Vassa." Alexander answered at once.

It had the great advantage of being "true" without revealing anything too damming.

"How much do you know of your traveling companions? Could there be a Fey among them?" Another inquisitor demanded.

"I know enough of the Fey that it would be impossible for one of them to travel at my side for long without me being aware of it." Alexander answered in a voice that was equal parts calm and confident.

Turning his attention back to Wyan, Alexander gave him a polite bow and coughed deeply to get his vocal chords warmed up.

Wyan had been kind enough to great him in Vassi, but Alexander suspected he might come across more favorably if he conversed in the local tongue. That said, speaking Tepestani could be a strain on ones voice and he was somewhat out of practice.

"Gods save you Goodman Wyan, I'm Alexander Diamondclaw." He introduced himself in the traditional Tepestani fashion.

Wyan blinked a few times in surprise, clearly Alexander's command of the language was better than either of them had expected it to be be.

"Gods save you Goodman Alexander. I appreciate any and all help I can get to resolve the case laid out before me. Still, your help would be more even welcome still if I knew a little bit more about yourself and your companions." Wyan intoned in a much less aggressive manner than his fellow inquisitors.

"What can I say, we hunt bounties, monsters, and anything else that needs to be sought out. We're heroes for all places and for all seasons. Florence Bastien the lady seated to my right along with Devi Skye are both experts in dealing with the Spring's Children. Callan Wright handles Summer's Children when they go astray. I and James Firecat are especially skilled at handling Autumn's Children. Finally Mirri Catwarrior has guided many of Winter's Children to their eternal rest. This won't be the first Fey Hunt I've been involved in, trust me." The blond haired man explained.

"Well enough said, I can only hope that having Ivan in my in my custody will help me finally unearth the evidence I need to conclusively confirm Bryonna's guilt." The middle aged inquisitor reflected a touch somberly.

"For the moment I'm willing to put aside the issue of what kind of bounty I can expect for Ivan's capture to focus on bigger matters. He seemed a rather good hearted fellow, perhaps too much so for his own good given that he was willing to openly admit he had committed a crime to an armed man whose profession he did not know.

I just want to make sure the man has no more confederates who might try to seek vengeance against me and mine." Alexander offered.

Wyan took the bait.

"The man does not have any further companions that I know of. That said, I can not see the harm in letting you know some details of the case, anyone with a keen enough ear and deep enough pockets would be sure to pick them up sooner or later.

I assume Ivan told you he was in love with a woman named Bryonna?" The inquisitor asked politely.

A nod from Alexander was the only thing required to keep him going.

"Well, it is my unfortunate conclusion that the girl in question is either a consort of the Fey, or quite possibly a Fey herself. Either way, she is a most dangerous servant of darkness. We can not allow such a 'woman' to live, free to do still more harm to those she cannot openly corrupt to her cause." Wyan explained his expression stern and unyielding.

"Why do you say that it is 'unfortunate' that you've come to this conclusion? I would think a man of your profession would be overjoyed to have captured one of the monsters who plague this land..." Alexander simply let the command dangle and sure enough Wyan could not resist taking the verbal bait.

"It is unfortunate because it speaks of either my own blindness, or the fall of one who was once innocent. Bryonna and my own daughter Lorelei were once quite good friends, perhaps this was part of some Fey plot all along to get close to me and undo the good I have sought to do for Tepest, or merely an opportunity seen and seized.

Either way, when Ivan came to this village first he showed interest in my daughter, and then suddenly in Bryonna." He informed his guest.

"The changing of which lady a young man fancies is hardly proof of Fey consortion on its own." Alexander rumbled, trying to keep his voice as neutral as he could.

"Indeed." Wyan agreed to his surprise.

"On its own it might simply have been another minor piece of gossip or at worst scandal. Given my daughter's fairness and Bryonna's deformity though, it is hard to imagine a man would suddenly switch his affections from the former to the latter.

The true foundations of the Fey accusations came when my daughter confronted Bryonna to try and win back Ivan's affection. It resulted in a foul spell being placed upon my sweet Lorelei, and it afflicted her with fits and seizures of a most grave nature.

The worst of them occurred the day before I agreed to have Bryonna committed to a cell below the temple and imprisoned until the truth could be discovered. These fits were so great that my daughter worked her shoulder out of joint and shattered two of her fingers. As still further proof once Bryonna was imprisoned behind a cold iron door Lorelei was no longer plague by fits." Wyan said dourly.

Alexander stood there in silence for a few moments winking his single visible eye rapidly.

Being told that Lorelei had suffered spasms and several broken bones pretty much tossed the idea that this was all some sort of lover's tiff out the window, and right into a pit filled with acid, along with some sharks who had heat ray shooting wands attached to their heads.

Alexander knew a thing or two about what jealousy could drive a woman to, his acquaintance with Mirri Catwarrior had been most instructive upon that particular subject. Even Mirri however would have shied away from inflicting bodily harm that severe upon herself (if not necessarily others) simply for the sake of jealousy alone.

In his mind Alexander drew a very firm black line through the theory that Lorelei was just a spiteful girl who was upset someone else finding love before she did. There was more going on here, there had to be.

"Which do you believe is more likely, that she is Fey herself or that she is consorting with them?" He inquired of Wyan, hoping he was in a talkative mood.

"What evidence I have managed to gather so far suggests that she was a Fey from the day she first arrived in Viktal. Not to speak ill of her dead 'parents' but instead I suspect that the 'true' Bryonna was killed by goblins just like her parents, and then a Fey changeling took her place, growing up among us, all the while waiting for the chance to strike." Wyan explained.

"You mention what evidence you have gathered so far… what sort of evidence is that exactly?" He tried to sound like the matter wasn't very important to him, even though few things could be further from the truth.

"Several folk have come forward to help in our investigation. One local woman reported that her son fell ill right after Bryonna scolded him for throwing rocks at birds. Another local claims that he got a painful rash after he refused to accompany her to the harvest festival last year. Even more daming a woman who lived in the village of Kellee knew Bryonna when she was but a child and claims to have witnessed her change shape!" Wyan expounded.

Alexander listened to this litany of various difference accusations and slowly nodded.

"I had heard that Bryonna was raised by a Vistana after her actual parents were killed. Do you know anything of the woman in question or any others who knew her well?" The green eyed man asked politely.

"As for Rima the Vistana in question, less than a year ago I had her brought in to investigate her as a possible Fey sympathizer. Thankfully all my investigation turned up was some malicious hearsay. Since there no true evil deeds to be laid at her feet, I announced her innocence to the village and released her with my personal apologies." The middle aged inquisitor reflected.

Alexander went back to doing that rapid winking thing again.

"So you found a Vistana, a lone Vistana, one who has no tribe to call her own, innocent of wrong doing. Most… unexpected. She must be completely above reproach. Do you know of any other important figures from Bryonna's past who still live?" The blond haired man pressed.

"When Bryonna was reaching nine years of age she was brought back to Kellee by Rima and given to a hunter there named Leobe who had no children of their own. He might be able to tell you more of Bryonna's past. As for other longtime companions, I can only hope there are none. Any unknown allies of Bryonna might be capable of inflicting fresh harm upon my daughter." The older man worried.

Alexander saw his opportunity and pounced.

"Whether they can act or not at the moment, you are correct that they surely represent a grave threat to the good people of Viktal. I'll admit that I and my companions are strangers to your village, but believe me, we one and all hate to see the innocent suffer. Not only that, but while you must obviously stay here and deal with the managing of Viktal, the Inquisition, and looking after your ill daughter, we can have the luxury of traveling across Tepest to gather further information.

That said, so long as she is alive, whatever allies Bryonna may have, be they fey or human, they will most likely remain somewhere close by. If she is put to the torch, then they will doubtlessly vanish into the forests until they can strike with complete surprise.

If your daughter is in no great physical danger so long as Bryonna remains imprisoned, best you simply keep her that way and not pass judgment until we can bring not just one servant, but several to justice." Alexander suggested.

Wyan took a few moments first to tug at his beard, and then to stroke it instead as he mulled over the suggestion.

"A shrewd stratagem. I was already planning to wait at least seven more days until the new moon when the power of the Fey is weakest to pass judgment, now I am certain that is the right course of action." He agreed.

"Thank you for the compliment… also I was wondering, would it be possible for me to consult with either your daughter or the accused herself? I know that Fey are prone to lies, but if I go forward guarding myself against believing anything she tells me, I may at least gain some greater understanding of the situation. It is impossible to tell a lie that when exposed for a lie does not reveal some fragment of truth..." The blond haired man explained.

Once again Wyan went back to tugging at his beard thinking the request over in great detail.

"To speak with Bryonna you must first allow some of my fellow clerics to grant you magical protections against any evil spells she tries to cast upon you. As for talking with Lorelei, I will see if she can spare you a few moments, but she is still recovering in both body and mind. Her words may indeed bring you much insight, but do nothing to worsen her distress." Wyan warned Alexander.

"I promise I'll be a perfect gentleman to her or my name isn't Alexander Diamondclaw." The blond haired man vowed.

XX XXX XXX

Wyan would allow only Alexander to meet with his daughter for fear of over stressing her by trampling so many new arrivals through his home at once.

Wyan's home was one of the few in Viktal with more than one story, or more than one room for that matter! Wyan went upstairs and helped his daughter down to meet Alexander.

It took no time at all to realize why Ivan might have been initially interested in Lorelei, for she was nothing sort of stunning. She had bright blue eyes that wonderfully offset her auburn hair, a perfect smile, and she moved with the grace of a dancer. Her features were smooth and her complexion fair.

The only thing that marred her beauty was the fact that at the moment her right arm was bound to her chest in a sling.

"Gods save you Good Mistress Lorelei, I am Alexander Diamondclaw, an adventurer who hopes to help bring Bryonna and all support her to justice." He introduced himself.

Lorelei took a long moment to examine Alexander. He was about half a foot or so taller than the young girl, but this did not stop her from drifting closer and tilting her chin upwards to look a touch longingly into his one green eye.

"Gods save you Goodman Alexander of the Diamondclaw. It is a shame that my heart is already pledged to another, for you must be the most hansom man I have ever seen." She declared in a playfully sultry voice that made it clear that she meant both the compliment to his looks and the strength of her own devotion.

Her left hand did not reach out and playfully twist a few strands of his blond hair, but there was something in the young girl's posture that made Alexander suspect her father's presence was the only thing which kept her from doing it.

"Just as well, I am too many years your senior and my heart also belongs to another. Still matters of the heart are why I am here, so that I might insure that Ivan D'Ogmai is free to be with the woman he loves. Can you tell me the nature of his courtship?" Alexander asked politely.

Lorelei nodded in agreement, taking a step away from Alexander to practically swoon as she spoke.

"Ivan and I met during one of his visits to Viktal. We were both instantly smitten, but Ivan insisted that we keep our relationship quiet. I think the poor dear was afraid that it might sully my reputation to be seen with him. We would meet outside of town and take long walks together in the woods or enjoy quiet picnics away from prying eyes.

I know that he was about to propose to me any day… until instead for no reason he suddenly told me that he no longer wished to be my companion! I was shocked, for I did not discover until later that it must have been one of Bryonna's spells that made him say such hateful things! I'm sure once Bryonna fully pays for her crimes Ivan will be his old self again!" She explained a slightly dreamy look in her eyes.

"What of Bryonna? Can you tell me how you met, and your past together? I have heard from your father that you were friends once..." Alexander asked still trying to keep his voice calm and reassuring.

Lorelei huffed and lapsed the fingers of her left hand into a fist, though she did not actually strike anything with them.

"It is hard for me to believe that I was once though of that monster as the sister I never had! I suppose that pity is wasted on vipers, they know nothing of friendship, only prey. It was just, she was so pitiful when I first laid eyes on her eight years ago, she was all alone with no friends, no parents, and everyone teased her because of her missing eye.

My heart nearly burst at the sight of how pathetic she was, and it seemed only right to try and give her some cause for cheer. I was so happy for her too only three weeks ago when told me that she'd finally found a man who would propose to her! I've had suitors not just from Viktal, Kellee or Briggdarrow, but as even from the lands of Darkon and Nova Vassa!

Bryonna though isn't half as pretty as I am and her dowry isn't half as large as mine, so I worried that she'd never find a husband. I was so overjoyed at the news that it even freed me from my concerns over how Ivan had recently broken my heart.

Then… then I discovered that it was none other than Ivan who Bryonna was supposedly going to marry! It was absurd! Nothing I could think of would explain him choosing Bryonna over me except for black magic and when I said it aloud… well it must have angered Bryonna enough to curse me!

The next thing I knew I was back here, my father looking over me. He told me that I had some kind of fit. It wasn't the first, and they only got worse until..." She let the words trail off biting her lip as she awkwardly half gestured with her bound limb as her eyes became watery.

Sensing that Wyan was not enjoying the sight of what recounting this particular tale had done to his daughter's mood Alexander decided to bow out before he was directly ordered to leave.

"Thank you Good Mistress Lorelei, you've given me much to think about." He told her, combining the words with the most florid bow he could manage.

Alexander really did hate to descend into foppery, but sometimes there was no truly dignified solution to a man's problems.

He left on his own but soon enough Wyan followed him all the same.

"Well there you have it." The inquisitor declared confidently.

"Indeed. Still, there's one more voice I need to hear from at the very least, even if it means I need the blessings of your fellow priests first for my own safety." Alexander insisted taking a moment to trace a quick circle in midair, in reverence to Belenus god of the Sun and chief deity of Tepest.

XXX XXX XX

The sound of Alexander's black booted footsteps echoed loudly in the confined cell. The place was so small there was no room for his companions or even members of the inquisition to join him, it was just him and the cell's occupant.

A bucket smelling strongly of human waste resided in one corner, though the cell's female occupant was little fairer to the nose.

The sight of Bryonna was no more appealing. She was dirty, her hair thickly matted against her head, her clothing little more than a filthy mass of wrinkles and tatters. She didn't even bother to look up when he entered or react to the sound of the door being closed and locked behind him. Instead she simply sat and sobbed into hands clutched tightly against her face.

Alexander took another step closer, but still she did not react.

"Ivan sent me." He told her, hoping that the name of her beloved would rekindle some semblance of reason within the young woman.

To his half surprise it actually worked, and slowly the sobs began to dry up. The girl looked in his direction, though her face was hidden by tangles of matted overgrown hair.

"Why? Don't tell me he's roped more innocents into his foolish efforts to free me. If I am destined for the pyre, best that I burn alone." She muttered hopelessly.

"You don't need to worry about me. Save your worries for yourself..." Alexander insisted, as he slowly sat down and began to take off one of his right boots.

Bryonna could only watch in confusion as he rolled up a dripping sock from it and tossed it to her.

"The inquisitors checked to make sure I wasn't bringing in anything to help you escape, but they're not quite as paranoid as I am. I soaked that sock in the strongest healing potion my alchemist knows how to brew, its taste may leave something to be desired, but it should help you hold together." Alexander promised her.

The imprisoned girl looked like she was about to refuse, but then decided to follow Alexander's suggestion, dignity had precious little place in a jail cell.

"Can you tell me a little about yourself? About who might be willing to speak on your behalf besides Ivan?" Alexander asked the girl when she was done.

"I was born in Kellee. My parents died in a goblin raid. I don't remember them or the attack since I was only two at the time.

Somehow I survived and was found by a Vistana woman named Rima. She healed my wounds and I lived with her until I was nine. That was when Rima decided I need to live a more normal life, and she asked a woodsman from Kellee named Leobe who knew my parents to find me a home.

I stayed with him for a few years, but he eventually found me a place of my own here in Viktal. Ever since then I managed to support myself doing washing, knitting, that sort of work." She explained a little color starting to come back to her face as the magical potion did its work.

"What do you know about the Fey?" Alexander inquired in the softest tone of voice he could manage.

"Not a blessed thing. I mean, I've heard the same stories as everyone else in town, but I haven't been consorting with them and by the gods I'm certainly not one of them!" She pleaded.

Alexander crouched down so he was more or less level with her.

"I'd have an easier time believing you if I could see your face." Alexander insisted.

Bryonna gasped in shock.

She moved very slowly, drawing back the tangled knot of her filthy hair reluctantly. As she tilted her head back the meager light of the cell fell across a face thickly smudged with dirt. She could have almost been described as pretty if it was not for the four jagged scars that marred her features.

The gruesome lines ran from forehead to cheek, straight across an empty right eye-socket.

"There, does that please you?" She spat bitterly.

Alexander sized up the disfigurement slowly.

"It's not the most horrific thing I've ever seen, but certainly there is room for improvement. I think the wound would not seem half so horrible, if only you kept that missing eye properly hidden..." The silver haired man noted as he began to remove his eye-patch.

He leaned forward and tenderly slung the strap over Bryonna's head, before adjusting it to cover her empty eye socket.

In the process he revealed his full face to her.

Bryonna promptly began to wail like a banshee, and fell back against the wall behind her, scrapping her dirty nails against it in a desperate frenzy. When she found that the stones had not the slightest bit of give in them and there was nothing she could do to get away from Alexander, instead she thrust an accusing finger in his face.

"FEY! FEY! FEY! FEY! FEY!" She screamed at the top of her lungs.

Alexander was unruffled by this turn of events.

"Are you finished?" He asked almost conversationally.

"This cell's walls are thick enough that you can scream your head off all day and no one outside is going to here you. I hope you're lucky enough not to know why..." Alexander further explained.

"Feyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfeyfey..." Bryonna gibbered seemingly even more out of touch with reality than she had been when Alexander had first entered.

Sensing that things were only going to get worse at this rate Alexander grabbed a some strands of his blond hair and carefully tucked them over his right eye hiding it from view.

"Look, be rational about this. You're already locked in a cell behind a cold iron door, and you're probably going to be burnt at the stake in a few days. Even if I am a Fey, is there anyway I could actually make your life that much worse?" Alexander pointed out.

Then he straightened up and went back to standing their passively while Bryonna continued to blubber in fear a bit more before she eventually reached the point where there was simply no more terror left to be had.

"Then why are you here?" She gasped.

"Like I said when I came in, Ivan wanted me to help you. Your fear was all the proof I'll ever need to know you're innocent. No one guilty of consorting with fey could be so utterly horrified by what you just saw. Sadly, such evidence alone will be unlikely to sway the judgment of the inquisition.

Still, now that I know the truth I'll find a way to reveal it to this entire village soon enough. If you think me a Fey, then ask yourself, was there ever a Fey whose will was easily thwarted?" He promised her.

Bryonna stayed silent and Alexander went back to adjusting his hair trying to twist as many strands of it across his face as possible before bending down to retrieve his sock, he doubted the guards would object to letting the girl keep his eye-patch if they even noticed.

XXX XXX XXX

"Eye-patch emergency?" James Firecat asked as soon as he saw Alexander's unusual hair style.

"Eye-patch emergency." The taller man confirmed.

James reached into one of the many pockets of his red vest and quickly produced a new black eye-patch for the blond haired man.

Alexander was extremely glad that his hair grew rather thick and long. That, and the fact that none of the inquisitors had bothered to complain about him looking slightly different coming out of Bryonna's cell than he had going in. Most likely because they were focused solely on making sure that the cell's remained properly incarcerated.

"Why don't you just start carrying those things around yourself?" Cal Wright demanded to know, as ever the Lamordian tended to favor the most bluntly practical solution to a problem.

"If I didn't fear loosing them, I'd do it far too often." Alexander answered without a moment's hesitation.

AN: Welcome to the Alexander Diamondclaw talks to people show! That's right, this entire chapter is pretty much nothing but Alex talking to various people! But hey you've read all the way through it now so I guess you've seen all of it now (here's a hit, you haven't, its the nature of "mystery" stories that you need to do a lot of exposition and clue gathering) and hopefully Alex is as charming a character out of universe as in so you don't mind spending some time with him.

Alexander's comments about seasons may seem a little bit like gibberish, but it makes sense in context, and since everyone in the room is aware of that context, there's no reason for them to explain it. Which is why we have these author comments sections… which either bring interesting new information to light, or prove I'm a bad writer since I can't tell a story that establishes all relevant information inside the narrative itself. I'd be more upset over that fact but once again, you get what you pay for….

Anyway one version of Tepestani history believes that the world used to be four worlds, that eventually got brought together . When the four worlds were divided each one represented a season, and each season had its own people. The Children of Spring are the Fey, who were the first people to be created by the gods, but because of that had a lot of problems that wouldn't be worked out until the Gods Created the Children of Summer, humans and non-magical animals. Then things started to go down hill and you got the Children of Autumn which are all things that look vaguely human but not quite (ad who don't fall under either of the previously mentioned categories at least, so elves would be Fey and Children of Spring, but dwarfs would be Children of Autumn most likely), so goblins, hags, lycanthropes, you get the idea. Finally there are the Children of Winter, the undead.

Also Lorelei is not necessarily lying when she says that Alex is the most hansom man she's ever met, Alex is the group's leader for good reason he has a lot of force of personality. Force of personality is measured by the Charisma stat, and oh let me just copy and paste the quote "Charisma measures a character's force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness."

So in the D&D universe you can always count on the kings and queens who are any good at ruling (in the sense of being able to get their commands followed, not in the sense of good versus evil) to be extremely attractive. There's like only one obvious exception to this rule and that's Malken in Nova Vassa as we've already discussed in a previous book..

The cast that Lorelei is wearing is something that I added because it isn't mentioned in the adventure book. I thought that was really weird (according to the timeline provided with the adventure, it has been only about two weeks since Bryonna was locked away, there's no way a fractured limb should heal that fast, I know that for a fact because I fractured my elbow during summer vacation after I had completed second grade and it was still in a cast when I went back to school to start third).

I thought that this was a weird, and possibly an oversight of the writers, lord knows they do mess things up from time to time (see that "Ka", "Ba" debate in the last Book) but then I realized it may actually be an accurate depiction of the world they live in. Lorelei is the daughter of the Tepest's most respected/powerful inquisitor who is deeply connected to the priesthood of Belenus and while arcane magic will get you burned at the stake as a Fey, divine magic, (so long as it is Belenus' divine magic) is A-OK, so she'd probably have gotten hit with a cure X wounds spell to fix her arm.

While life in Ravenloft is dystopian and backwards in a lot of ways, you really can't help but marvel at how magic can kick modern medicine's butt to the curb at times. Did you break an arm? Drink a potion of healing or see a priest and you'll be ready to go back to chopping down trees/slicing up monsters the very next day!

I decided that hit points being an abstract system, only PCs /people with LOTS of hit points are allowed to throw off broken bones through healing magic, normal single digit CR commoners can be healed to get out of danger/speed the process along, but not fix it overnight. It just makes for too weird a world where so long as you aren't actually killed (and sometimes when you are) magic can make all your injuries instantly go away.


	3. Chapter 3

Monster Party Book Five: Forgive me my mistakes, I'm only human.

Chapter Three: I'd like to help you Tom, in any way I can. I sure appreciate the way you're working with me, I'm not a monster Tom, well, technically I am.

"You seem to be taking this one pretty seriously Boss." Cal Wright couldn't help but reflect as the group departed from Viktal and headed for Kellee.

"I take all our work seriously." Alexander insisted not even sparing so much as a single glance backwards.

"You say that, but normally we'd be walking right now." The alchemist pointed out.

Indeed the group was not walking, they were riding on five reasonably athletic horses that Alexander had rented (he'd needed to leave behind quite a bit of gold with their actual owner to convince the man he didn't intend to just ride off with them) less than an hour ago.

"If you'd prefer to walk then you can dismount at your leisure, so long as you can keep pace with the rest of us." The blond haired man answered.

"Hey, I'm the last guy to object to a chance to let someone else do dull repetitive physical labor for me. It is just normally every time I bring up the subject of horses you say that if I want one I'd have to pay for it and handle all the stuff related to taking care of it, and as much as I love relaxing, I love money even more. This time though, you didn't just pay for the things, you practically pushed us into the saddles!" The blue eyed man reflected.

"Horses are faster than walking. They're not the fastest method of travel of course, but they're the fastest I'm willing to risk at the moment." Alexander noted, not feeling any desire to discuss certain possibilities when they still weren't all that far from the village and traveling along a very well known road.

"So speed really matters to you? Like I said, I think this one has gotten under your skin a little. Come to think of it, this is the first time I can remember you having an eye-patch emergency without someone trying to kill you first." Cal continued to needle his commander.

Alexander gripped the reins to his gray coated mount so tightly it was a wonder they didn't start to fray.

"If you're taking such an interest in my decisions why are you even letting me stay in command at the moment? This is a trial after all, aren't you the son of the world's greatest defense attorney?" The green eyed man shot back.

"Hey, being a defense attorney requires two things, one of them is that the people try to use logic to achieve their verdicts, the other is that they can understand that you can try to defend someone without becoming personally involved and thus even if it turns out they're guilty, you shouldn't be blamed. Since I don't see either of those things being very likely out here, I'm not gonna set foot in any courtroom, assuming they even have courtrooms.' The blond haired alchemist admitted.

Alexander simply sighed heavily in response, at first.

"That girl isn't a Fey. Whatever else is going on around here, I'm sure of that. She's not a Fey. She's not a Fey, and they're going to give her to the flames all the same. She'll be fed to the flames, and thanks to us probably Ivan as well. At the very least he'll face either immuration or banishment.

That is what could happen to them, but it won't because of us. If worse comes to worse, I'll suffer another eye-patch emergency, go in there and drag them out of their cells one slung over either shoulder. Though that particular plan is only going to come into play if all others fail." Alexander Diamondclaw admitted.

Cal Wright made a noncommittal mumbling sound and tilted his head slightly in the direction of Florence Bastien. It was the kind of meaningless sound that could actually convey a great deal of meaning if you'd known someone for long enough.

"Make sure you don't kill anyone when you do it." Florence Bastien 'objected', if you could call it that.

"Oh, and make sure to give the rest of us plenty of warning beforehand Sir. I want to be ready to watch every second of it! Kali makes the best violence for those who make their own!" Mirri Catwarrior added eagerly from atop her own black coated mount.

Given that there hadn't been quite enough horses to go around Mirri and James had been forced to share one. Since that she was by far the better horsewoman, Mirri was holding he reins while James sat further back, his hands wrapped around her to help keep steady. Neither of them seemed to be especially upset over how closely their bodies were squeezed together by this arrangement.

"Much as it will disappoint you Mirri I'm fairly sure it won't come to that. Any situation where everyone involved seems to come off so sympathetically is either just one gigantic misunderstanding… or there is an extra player sitting at the table who doesn't want anyone else to realize they've anted up.

We're going to get to the bottom of this one way or another, and because time is of the essence we're going to use these horses to get to Kellee as fast as equinely possible. Now then, unless you have any other questions lets see if we can't get them moving a little faster..." Alexander pointed out giving his reins a quick snap.

XXX XXX XXX

The village of Kellee was much like the Viktal, except for a few small differences. The two most obvious were ones were that since there were no large bodies of water nearby to support fishing there were a great many more hunters and trappers. The other was that the place seemed to no have no central church or temple, instead there was only a burnt out ruined of what had might once been such a building a few years ago.

The group got plenty of odd looks, but their questions about Leobe's location were fairly quickly answered. His cottage happened to be near the edge of the village, suggesting a possible reason for why they had been so forthcoming.

After tying up their mounts at the village stable the group headed for the place on foot. Leobe's cottage was not as carefully maintained as the others in the village. The white paint had peeled in several locations revealing gray and rotting boards underneath. Weeds sprouted up in several places and one of the building's two windows had a broken pain.

All in all, you could have almost thought that the place was abandoned.

At least you could have if it wasn't for the brawny, unkempt man sitting on the front porch. His weathered face was almost lost behind a bushy gray-streaked beard and a wild mane of black hair.

With grim determination the man tinkered with what looked like a broken animal trap. He seemed to take no notice of the group, refusing to look up from his work in the slightest. As they came close enough that he couldn't possibly ignore the sound of their footfalls he grunted out a pair of terse sentences each consisting of a pair of words.

"I'm busy. Go away." He insisted.

"Is the spring that closes the trap broken, or just the pressure plate that detects if something has stepped in it?" Cal asked in something vaguely approaching a friendly manner, hoping to be able to use his interest in mechanical devices to loosen the man's tongue.

"If I knew what was wrong with it I'd have already fixed it." The man who was most likely Leobe grumbled, still refusing to look up from his work.

Alexander took another step forward and coughed loudly before speaking.

"My name is Alexander Diamondclaw, and we're here to try and help Bryonna." He explained calmly.

It was like someone had flipped a switch in the black haired man's mind. He didn't quite toss aside the broken trap but he did set it down very quickly.

Now that they were eye to eye with one another it was possible to see that the man's green eyes were oddly compassionate despite an outer layer of harshness.

"I knew Bryonna when she was a wee one and I've heard what's going on in Viktal. That priest, Wyan, he has it all wrong! How can I help ya?" He asked, eager enough to converse now that he knew the future of his adopted daughter was on the line.

"What do you know about Bryonna's childhood?" Alexander asked, figuring that this was the most obvious place to start.

"She was born eighteen years ago, the daughter of a good friend o' mine. Don't you believe any nonsense ya might hear 'bout her being bein' a fey. I helped change her diapers a few times, and that kid's as human as I am.

Her parents were killed by goblins when she two but Rima a Vistana who lives in the woods to the north, managed to rescue her. Bryonna lived with her 'til she was nine, but Rima thought it best fer the child t' grow up with normal folk then.

She sent for me, an' I took Bryonna to live some folk o'er in Viktal." Leobe explained.

"Bryonna mentioned Rima to us as well. From what I've heard though a single lone Vistana is rarely a figure worthy of trust." Alexander pointed out.

It wasn't that the blond haired man had any particular bias against the wanderers, it was simply that the most common reason for a Vistana to be alone was for them to have been banished by their companions. Vistana only ended up getting banished when they committed some truly heinous crime, typically one which targeted their own tribesmen.

Leobe simply shook his head, shrugged, his shoulders and offered Alexander a well meaning grin.

"Rima is one o' the kindest, gentlest individuals I know. I don't know why she chooses to be alone, but it's probably because us 'civilized' are in the wrong. She mighta gone a bit strange 'cause she's always alone in the forest, but she's got so much heart that even that Wyan fellow could see she ain't no Fey." The trapper insisted.

"Which brings us around to the subject of Wyan, do you have anything to say about him that we should be aware of?" Alexander probed, trying to gather as much information as possible.

"I don't think the man's a blackguard, but you won't hear me sing his praises much either. I think he mighta been a woodsman like meself. He certainly carries hisself like one. These days, he fancies himself some kind o' Fey hunter, near as I can tell. Folks who come this way from Viktal speak highly of him, but if he was as great as they claim he wouldn't have let himself get fooled into thinking Bryonna was a Fey!" The dark haired man insisted.

"While I was talking to Wyan he claimed that there was some sort of previous evidence of Bryonna being a Fey. That he had been given statements by someone from this village who had claimed to know her well. Would you have any guesses who that might be?" Alexander pressed further.

Leobe spat on the ground angrily in response.

"Oh I have guesses all right, three of the them and the first two don't count. I'm sure its Marla the village weaver. At least she used to be a weaver, before age caught up with her and her hands stopped being up to the task.

Since she can't work anymore she tends to fill her days listening in on what isn't her business and saying what isn't so to anyone who will listen. She claims that Rima only got declared innocent by Wyan because she cast a spell on him! Not only that, but she's also half convinced some of the priests from Viktal that because I spend so much time out in the woods I'm probably Fey touched myself!

That's why I'm here fixing traps rather than trying to help by adopted daughter… Bryonna made it plain to me that should the worst come to the worst, she didn't want me to get dragged into her problems." Leobe muttered dourly.

"Ah. Would you be willing to tell us where we might be able to find Rima?" Alexander asked one final question figuring that a meeting with the Vistana in question would undoubtedly be the next piece to this particular puzzle.

"I can't promise you anything, she likes to move around a fair bit like any Vistani. Still, I know where she was camping a week ago and with luck she might still be there. Will need some time to get my supplies together first though." Leobe insisted.

"Don't worry, I can think of a few things we'll need to handle before we leave." Alexander promised.

XXX XXX XXX

"Were you able to find out anything?" Alexander inquired as Mirri Catwarrior returned to the group's table at the Hawk's Haven inn.

The black haired woman pulled out a chair for herself, and sat down gracefully. Then she took a moment to casually fiddle with the lenses that her eyes were currently hidden behind.

"You know me and my charming personality Sir. Even bitter old ladies are no match for it." Mirri declared with a bright smile.

"So what did you find out?" Alexander demanded.

Mirri leaned so far back in her chair that she was able to place her feet atop the table, in a maneuver that drew more than a few irritated glances in her direction from the other patrons.

"She's not lying when she talks about having seen Bryonna be replaced by a fey one day while she was looking after her." Mirri insisted.

"Really?" Alexander growled as if that particular statement almost personally offended him.

"Look, even I have limits, I'm a… charming person, not an oracle. I can tell if people are lying to me, not if they're lying to themselves. That's the lie people tend to tell most convincingly after all, the one that they believe to be the truth." She pointed out.

Alexander relaxed slightly and then tossed some coins on the table to pay for their drinks.

"In short, we still don't have any real evidence one way or another. Lets hope that Rima can do more to help." He worried half bowing his head as if in prayer.

"So now our best chance is that we're going to get a straight answer from a Vistana? Maybe we should try finding Bryonna's parents first, they might have come back as intelligent undead..." Devi suggested.

"I said it was our best chance, I never said it was an especially good chance." Alexander admitted.

XXX XXX XXX

Luckily the campsite was not terribly far from Kellee, and Leobe was able to lead them there in less than two hours.

It was located in an area where the forest gave way to a rocky ridge. Through the smothering gray of seemingly endless rain the sharp eyed members of the group could see a steep incline that ended at the mouth of a cave. Even more luckily the faint reddish flicker of a fire coming from inside suggested that someone was currently making use of the campsite.

"I'll leave you here if that's all right. Kellee isn't as prone to Fey hunts as Viktal, but..." He didn't want to say anymore but it was obvious that his adopted daughter's current situation was a black mark against him in the eyes of his fellow villagers.

Actually spending a great deal of time dealing with a Vistana in the company of only strangers was another black mark that he'd rather not risk.

"We'll also try not to vanish mysteriously never to be heard from again after being lead out here by you also. We would hate hate for our untimely deaths to inconvenience you." Cal offered with his traditional dark sense of humor.

Then the group parted ways with Leobe and they headed into the cave. The first thing that they noticed was a small cooking fire that danced at its center.

Coils of gray smoke roll through the air, rising through a narrow hole in the cave's roof. Glowing embers swirled in the air, tossed about by unseen breezes. There was no furniture to be found save for a worn sleeping mat. Sitting cross-legged near the campfire was a veiled woman.

Her clothes were as old and worn as she was, their once bright colors faded and muted. She wore a pair of gloves that might have once been white but were now too smudged with dirt to be sure. With trembling hands she laid out a pattern of cards on the stone floor before her.

As each card struck the stone floor she muttered a few words in a strange language somethings chuckling to herself. A man dressed in an embroidered shirt, leather breeches, and mud-splattered riding boots sat at the fire across form her. His eyes focused on the tattered cards and his grim face was firmly set.

"You know it's a shame that she's not cooking anything because all of a sudden I'm feeling a bit peckish." Mirri Catwarrior half whispered to her companions.

The black haired woman had an incredibly keen sense of hearing, to the point that she could pick up the sound of someone's heart from across a room. In this case however, what she was 'hearing' was the lack of a heartbeat, and given the ways her eyes were locked on the male occupant of the cave it was clear who the lack of sound came from.

"Maybe we will get to meet one of Bryonna's parents after all!" James suggested, trying to put the best spin possible on this particular revelation.

The old woman continued to focus on the cards for the moment but eventually turned to face her uninvited guests.

"Come closer..." She intoned in a dry and crackling voice as her bony hands began to gather up the cards from the floor.

"Let me see your hands." Alexander insisted as he was careful not to let anyone get closer than he was to the woman.

"Now why should I do something like that?" Rima (assuming this woman was Rima) asked in an almost tender voice.

"Let me show you mine first and we'll see if that doesn't clarify the mater." The blond haired man offered.

Alexander removed the black glove from his right hand and held it out palm up. It was impossible to miss a wide purple scar that had been carved into his hand, though luckily not deep enough to be impairing. Rima gingerly fingered the scar and her eyes began to light up with comprehension.

"Now this I did not expect. Tell me how did you come by such a thing?" Rima asked, her somewhat weathered eyes squinting as she tried to get a better look.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Still, your own hands?" Alexander repeated his earlier request, a little more forcefully now.

Rima now willingly removed her gloves, revealing a pair of wrinkled and rather bony hands that were otherwise completely unremarkable.

"It can get dreadfully cold in here even with a fire going so I hope you won't mind if I put them back on." She noted with a wry smile.

Seeing all he needed to see Alexander took a seat next to the fire and the others did the same soon.

"I am indeed Rima the Vistana, and I am still worthy of the title even if I prefer a more solitary life. My cards told me to expect you..." She promised before starting to shuffle the deck and then dealing them out quickly in a small five card circle with one card in the middle.

Without further ado she began to flip them over and recite their meaning. The first card was an upside down picture of a monstrous wolf howling at the moon.

"The Beast card, when inverted it represents the ability to chain the animal within, savagery defeated by civilization." She intoned solemnly before flipping over another card.

This one like the first was upside down, it depicted a furtively dressed man in a dark cloak who was silhouetted by the light of a full moon.

"The traitor, when inverted it represents weakness among those who would oppose you, a chance to turn foes into friends." The reading continued as the third card was turned over. Unlike the two before it was this card was right side right and showed five men seated around a table, each man having placed a coin on the table and clasped hands with the one to his right and left.

"The guildsman, it represents the strength of unity, feast and famine alike shared equally between those who have similar purposes." The old woman noted and flipped over the fourth card.

It showed a hooded figure standing among trees that had been marked with strange glyphs, like the one directly before it the card was right-side up.

"The druid, it speaks of release from bondage, the card suggests someone who how has been able to ease a burden they suffered from greatly." She reflected before turning her attention to the fifth and final card in the wheel.

It was right-side up and depicted a solitary black avian perched upon a slender twig gazing at a full moon which was only partially obscured by clouds.

"The Raven, a source of wisdom and insight for those who seek to do right, but one that was well hidden or unexpected." She explained before her and her guests eyes traveled to the card in the center of the circle which she now revealed to them.

It showed the horrific sight of a man with the head of a beast seated upon a throne grasping a scepter of some sort. Every single visible bone in his body seemed to bend at odd or unnatural angles, from his elbows to and knees to even his fingers. It was upside down.

"The darklord inverted, it represents..." She began.

"I think we all know what that card represents." Alexander cut her off in as gentle a manner as possible.

Rima "tisked" the blond haired man waving a finger in his face disaprovingly.

"You may be enlightened, but there is always more to learn. If you did not come to me for knowledge I have other guests I can attend to..." She pointed out, gesturing to the walls of the cave.

Now that the group was seated and actively looked in the direction she indicated it was possible to notice that Rima had already possessed more than one guest. The other occupants of the cave were easy to miss after all, they were small men and women with gossamer wings that flashed in the firelight.

Their bodies were slender and delicate like those of young children, their fine features were dominated by large round eyes.

"Hope we weren't interrupting anything." James Firecat offered to the strange creatures.

They replied in a language that was incomprehensible but beautiful all the same, like the tinkling of bells or the chirping of birds.

"My little friends are the wee folk of the forest. There are more of their kind in Tepest than ours you know. Call them fairies, pixies, sprites, or what have you, but don't fear them. These are not the Fey that frighten Wyan so much. Dark creatures reside in the woods, but not everything that chooses to live there is evil." Rima introduced the strange creatures.

"They aren't the Fey that frighten Wyan… but they are fey." Florence Bastien insisted.

Then she herself spoke a few "words" in that same strange language with which the pixies had greeted the group.

A lively conversation broke out between Florence and Rima's more energetic guests, though the Vistana did what she could translate.

"They want to know what happened to her beautiful hair." She explained as indeed a pair of the creatures rose into the air on their wings and began to flit about Florence a few inches above her seated body.

"So what makes these things different from the ones who so frighten Wyan?" Cal asked.

He kept his eyes on the small creatures all the same, not feeling especially comfortable when the cave was crowded enough to make it hard for a fully grown man to move about, but these pixies could buzz about as they wished.

"The fact that they know the meaning of death." Florence answered in traditional Tepestani.

"These are my proper kin, though distant as the oak is to the vine. There are others… ones who have been caught in the twilight of existence, never to die, but never to truly live either." She declared in a melancholy voice.

"Which is different from an undead how exactly?" Mirri coughed rather loudly at this point.

"I was speaking in a somewhat metaphorical manner. There is a grave difference between something that once lived, died, then returned as an undead, and something that simply neither lives nor dies. Something monstrous deprived them of an understanding of death, and in so doing made monsters of them all." Florence warned ominously.

Then she went back to her conversation in a language that seemed much to bright and playful to express the dark concepts she had ruminated on a few moments ago.

"I apologize for interrupting your reading, it is simply that I've been involved in other tarokka reading in the past, and ever since I gained this mark on my hand that card always seems to show up." Alexander explained trying to win his way back into Rima's good graces.

This explanation seemed to mollify the Vistana slightly some as with one surprisingly smooth motion she swept up the six cards and then spread out the entire deck across the floor.

"The tarokka tells me many things. Through the cards I have spoken with the spirit of Bryonna's long-departed mother. She warned me that her daughter was in trouble. She also told me to expect a group of strangers to visit me who wished to help her." The Vistana explained as she began to shuffle the deck once again.

"Did she or your fancy cards also tell you about anything we could do to help her?" Cal pondered sounding like he very much doubted it at the moment. Rima gestured to the man across from her.

"This is Aroun. Like the faries he has also come to ask for my help." She explained.

As she spoke his name the man lifted his gaze from the ground for the first time. Without a smile or the faintest hint of emotion he looked at the group.

"hello." He half whispered, his voice so faint it was almost lost beneath the buzzing of the faries' wings.

Aroun's eyes were as vacant as his words, and the firelight played upon his features strangely.

"So what manner of undead are you exactly?" Mirri asked in the most tactless manner imaginable.

Aroun's body fidgeted slightly, one of his hands reaching towards his stomach. As the firelight continued to flicker inside the cave it was possible to see that he seemed to cast no shadow upon its walls.

"rima says i am a giest. i do not know enough to disagree." He answered in the same awkwardly monotone voice.

Rima nodded in agreement with the words and shuffled herself across the floor to draw closer to the dead man.

"You have nothing to fear from Aroun, no one does except possibly the one who killed him. His death was a horrible experience, even more so than most. That is why he is still here rather than having properly passed on. The tarokka told me that he knew some important clue in the matter of Bryonna's arrest.

Except that in his current condition his mind very weak and unable to recall the information we need. I believe that his memory will return when his spirit is reunited with his body. The cards have told me it is laying unburied somewhere on Castle Island, a barren place surrounded by the waters of Lake Kronov.

The tarokka has remained ominously silent on the nature of his killer though. You should take every possible precaution when you investigate the island, or else it may claim your lives just as it did his." She warned the six.

"We'd hate to have our untimely deaths inconvenience this particular fine giest and leave him with no way of ever being reunited with his corpse." Cal promised.

End Chapter.

AN: The six card tarokka reading was not in the individual adventure, I added it for the fun of getting to show off my own "skill" at interpreting tarokka cards.

Also the story of how Alex ended up getting that mark on his hand will eventually be told, it's actually pretty obvious if you've read every Ravenloft adventure out there and think about it a little. Just to be clear if you didn't realize it already, the reason Alex is so worried about a lone Vistana, it's because darklings are a thing, he has to be aware of that and take some precautions/keep on his guard….

Finally the darklord inverted doesn't actually mean what you probably think it means, in the third edition version of the tarokka deck they came out with the "Hero" card, a reversed darklord simply suggests that someone of great power who does evil is in a position of weakness. That said, tarokka decks don't always have their meanings set in stone, and readings involving Alex draw the inverted darklord card about as frequently as ones involving Azalin include the necromancer card. If you don't know how frequently that happens… well I'll talk about it more in the chapters to come.


	4. Chapter 4

Monster Party Book Five: Forgive me my mistakes, I'm only human.

Chapter Four: It's suffocating to say but the female mystique takes my breath away.

Lake Kronov was in more or less the center of Tepest, which meant the group needed to head back towards Viktal and get still more use out of their horses.

As the group began to draw within extreme eye range of Castle Island the place made a less than comforting impression. The island was little more than a jagged crest of rock breaking the clawing waves of Lake Kronov.

Bitter wind drove the chop hard against the coast, shrouding the place in a heavy mist. Rising from the gloom and stone was a shattered fortress, no doubt the eponymous castle.

The worn and broken walls comprising the keep were covered with tangles of ivy. Gulls and terns danced about in the air, their raucous calls shrill against the rumbling waves. At the same time however, another sound began to fill the air. Its source was difficult to determine, but a delicate melody seemed to haunt the air around the island.

"Jeez if I were you Mirri just one look at this place would make me want to scarf down an entire buffet. Tell me Mr. Deadman what made you think that coming to someplace like this would be a good idea?" Cal asked Aroun.

The giest gazed back at him with empty eyes.

"i don't know. i was staying in viktal… or maybe it was briggdarrow… got the idea to go out explore island…. seemed like such a good idea..." He half wheezed half whispered.

Mirri sighed and shook her head shooting him a pitying gaze.

"Don't worry too much about it, not all undead can be perfect reflections of who we were in life. Mummies are hopelessly driven by some bizarre cause, liches loose touch with time to the point that they can sit down to read a book and stand up a decade later, ghouls and ghasts start devouring corpses…. Compared to that what is a little amnesia?" She asked amicably enough.

The group continued to make their way down to the shore looking for any nearby boats they might be able to borrow. Luckily they were able to locate a canoe large enough for two or three people and at that point Aroun began to truly show some signs of paradoxical life.

"I died not far from here." His voice was suddenly stronger and much more confident.

Before any members of the group had time to properly contemplate this warning a heavy mist began to boil out of the air around the group.

"HOLD HANDS!" Alexander barely had time to command before it was upon them, its clammy tendrils quickly obscuring everything with a billowing wash of macabre yellow-green vapors.

Beyond the spreading cloud the shrieks of gulls began to sound like mocking laughter. As the steady wind clawed at the sickly fog a gentle sound began to fill the air.

At first the sonance was impossible to discern against the crying of the sea birds, but with each second it grew louder until it was unmistakably the sound of a young woman singing.

"Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling  
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side  
The summer's gone, and all the roses falling  
It's you, it's you must go and I must bide.

But come ye back when summer's in the meadow  
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow  
It's I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow"

Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.

A strange sort of amused apathy began to play across the faces of nearly all who heard it. Aroun reacted to the music with neither great interest or dislike, he simply let it roll over him like most events since his death. Mirri Catwarrior however simply sniffed in disapproval.

"I can sing better than that." She insisted to no one in particular.

Then she pulled a little harder on the red gloved hand that she was holding to see how its owner reacted. There was no answering tug back, and she promptly yanked even harder bringing James Firecat close enough that not even the fog could hide him from her.

One look into his vacant brown eyes was all that Mirri needed to know that something mystical was afoot.

Mirri let go of the other hand that she had grabbed and brought her free limb up to her face. There was no time for subtlety in this mater, she grabbed the glasses that rested over her face and wrenched them free with such force that they flew apart in the process.

"Whoops sorry Sir..." She half giggled, glad to be rid of the things.

With the lenses disposed of it was possible to see Mirri Catwarrior's eyes. They were beautiful, and terrible all at once.

They were a bright sparkling red color like a pair of rubies, and the longer one gazed into them the more desirable they seemed.

There were all manner of stories and fables about how various heroes had been saved from foul spells designed to ensnare their minds and lure them into complete inaction or even worse turn them against their friends.

Some said that there was nothing quite so powerful as true love's kiss, still others argued for the a more pedestrian canteen of water to the face and there were those who swore by the power of being pricked with a silver needle.

Mirri Catwarrior had personally always taken a distinctly "two wrongs make a right" approach to the matter, and it hadn't let her down yet.

She pulled James Firecat in close and gazed deeply into his eyes.

"I am the most beautiful woman in the entire world." She cooed, gently blowing air through her fingertips onto his face.

"Why tell me that…? I can see your face just fine..." James replied, a sleepy trickle of saliva dribbling from his mouth.

"Get out your harmonica and start playing." Mirri commanded.

"What song?" James asked as eagerly as possibly given the circumstances.

"That dancing number I like so much, and make sure to sing it also." The black haired woman instructed.

"Sure thing Mirri… would do anything for you..." James vowed, his red gloved hands digging into the pockets of his jacket and soon enough producing a harmonica. Then he pressed it to his lips and blew.

Almost instantly more music than any one instrument should rightfully be able to produce blossomed into being. There was the beating percussion, the strumming of strings, and sounds even stranger still!

The music continued to flow from the harmonica even when when James took his lips away from it. Next he started to sing in the absurd voice of one who has been ordered to be enthusiastic, but has no idea how.

"Two single hearts on fire, currently on the wire. As inhibitions fade, a focus moment made..." He called out as his harmonica continued to blast out music, its fast beat pushing back the slower drone that had subtly haunted them since they first laid eyes on Castle Island.

Mirri tapped her foot on the ground in time with the rhythm, letting her ears synch up with the tune, letting her keen sense of hearing reach out to pick out the sounds of five familiar heartbeats… and one that she had not heard before.

It was slower than average, though still faster than Florence Bastien's, probably around sixty beats a minute.

"Peekaboo..." Mirri practically purred to herself as she clicked her tongue and listened to sounds bounce here there and everywhere.

She let go of James' hand, certain that he could handle himself for at as long as the song lasted and dashed towards that unexplained heartbeat. She saw the fog billow and roll, her eyes (keener than any human's) were able to pick out how it bent and twisted around the body of someone she couldn't see.

"You're disrupting my song..." A feminine voiced hissed out.

She a version of Tepestani that made the words seem to flow and ebb with aquatic grace.

"So terribly not sorry, maybe you'd like to try dancing to my tune instead?" Mirri invited the invisible woman.

That was when she saw the fog brush up against something short and flat emerging from exactly where she suspect her foe's hand to be.

"Bruises and bitemarks say, takes one to bring the pain. Passion lies in screams of estacitic dreams..." James' voice continued to sing.

Mirri's unseen opponent dashed forward, their invisible blade slicing out for Mirri's head.

She quickly leaned back and twisted her body so that the strike cut through only empty air. It was a little tricky to do all the necessary mental calculation, ears had to hear the heartbeat, her mind had to trace the shape of her foe based on that particular fact, then on top of that add in the blade currently being held in the right hand.

Countless different calculations had to be created, considered, discarded, and revised in order to accomplish the feat. It was a task that no mortal mind operating with mortal senses had a hope of accomplishing.

Mirri Catwarrior wasn't mortal though, death had freed her from the burdens of morality and mortality alike, and her mind and body both moved all the faster for it.

"You're in a place for fear, lips are biting here! Lets make moment worth the while, let's kill the night and go down in style..." James continued to sing even as the invisible woman turned her blade towards Mirri again.

Before she could properly begin her second round of attacks though Mirri's right leg lashed out. She felt it strike something she couldn't see, and felt that thing propelled away by the force of the blow.

Even more rewardingly her ears were able to pick out the sound of a body landing on the ground a dozen or so feet in front of her. It would have been even more fun if she'd actually been able to see her opponent get tossed through the air, but that sound alone would have to do for now.

"Feel the magic rise, we're plotting our demise of perspiration and alcohol as I introduce the bedroom brawl!" James sung on.

"You made me break my glasses, so I'm going to break your bones." Mirri vowed before clicking her tongue again.

"Why are you even doing this?" That strange voice called out to her.

"Why are you? We're just trying to..." She began before promptly deciding that given the somewhat convoluted nature of her current situation, combined with the fact that she was never really one for asking permission either, it might just be best to keep things simple.

"You attacked us first!" Mirri insisted, keeping her ears pricked as she could hear the footsteps of someone starting to circle around her.

"These are my waters, my castle, only my servants are welcome here! If your knees will not bend I will break them!" The voice vowed.

"You bring the ropes and chains, I'll bring the pills and games. I can show you pain and make you say my name..." The James's voice rang out providing a backdrop for the battle.

Then Mirri heard the sound of running feet headed straight towards her from behind. She turned herself about in the blink of an eye, and leaped over another sword slice before landing another of her powerful kicks upon her foe when she descended.

"Strahd Von Zarovich owns a castle. Want to hear how I know that? Because he hung a flag from it and dared anyone to try and take it down. Do you have flag? All you seem to have is some pretty words and I face that I bet isn't half as pretty. If you weren't so ugly you probably wouldn't feel the need to stay invisible all the time..." Mirri called out.

She didn't especially expect that particular jibe to actually work, but it could hardly hurt to try!

"My daughter, my grandson… both sacrificed for nothing at all when I was cheated out of true vengeance for my slain love! Now I am forced to be haunted by a beast in his shape, I will make you feel my pain, I will make you..." The voice began to rant.

She was rendered abruptly silent when Mirri artfully darted through the fog and slammed her right hand into an invisible stomach with enough strength to knock the other woman back, force the air from her lungs, and possibly break a few ribs also.

"I will make you eat my fist!" Mirri declared proudly.

"You will believe my lies, that I'm not like other guys. That sparkle in my eyes is part of my disguise." James continued to sing.

"By the way, just a 'friendly' suggestion, most people who want to fight while invisible probably try to limit the amount of noise they make..." She pointed out smugly before clicking her tongue again.

That was when she "saw" it.

The figure of a woman starting to shrink and grow wings…

Mirri's unknown assailant wasn't the only one who knew that particular trick though!

A cloud of white mist swirled around Mirri Catwarrior's body and a few moments later she took to the air in the shape of a large bat.

The bat was an unrivaled master of finding finding prey by ear rather than eye, and in that shape Mirri's echolocation pierced through the fog with ease. She picked up the outline of a slightly injured gull that was trying to fly away. Mirri beat her wing harder, rose up into the air, then dove.

A bat wasn't that much larger or stronger than a gull, but on the other hand it didn't especially need to be, not when sheer momentum was giving Mirri a helping hand. Well momentum, and the fact that she didn't all of her "amusing" powers in animal shape. In particular, she still possessed the ability to drain life force from living creatures through physical contact.

"You're in a place for fear lips are for biting here! Lets make this moment worth the while, lets kill the night and go down in style." James' voice promised as Mirri's tiny bat claws to strike blows completely out of proportion to their size.

The rapidly weakening gull was driven down to the ground before it could reach the safety of the lake. Another "chirp" for the purpose of echolocation told her the gull was starting to grow and Mirri started to return to human form, planting a victorious foot upon her foe's stomach, ready to drain still more lifeforce should it seem necessary.

"You're in a place for fear, lips are for biting here! Lets make this moment worth the while, lets kill the night and go down in style!" James was finishing up but the song wasn't the only thing that was coming to an end...

As Mirri finished up the process of returning to human shape she noticed that a change was starting to come over the island. Even to her keen ears the gulls were falling silent and even the waves seemed to have been magically muted.

Beneath her foot the body of a woman gradually began to shimmer into sight. She had the blue-white skin of a drowning victim and hair that might easily be mistaken for kept. The woman spat out a mouthful of thick green blood that even Mirri found disgusting. Gold-flecked eyes full of hate gazed up at Mirri's red ones.

"You take from me my life this day, but are not free to go your way; when'er the sound of waves you hear, your heart shall know its greatest fear!" She promised.

Then her eyes rolled back in her head and her heart ceased to beat. Mirri scoffed as the now obviously magical mist that had surrounded the group began to disperse.

"That's it? That's the best you can do? You're going to use your dieing words to lay a curse on me, and you want to give me a fear of water?" She chortled in mocking malice, picking up the dead body and tossing it even further way from the lake in case it somehow reanimated.

"I'm a freaking vampire! Fear is the APPROPRIATE response to large bodies of water! What's next you going to curse someone so that they fear for their lives when they see lava flowing towards them? What about making them feel incredibly hungry if they haven't been able to eat for two days straight? Devi do you have my coffin?" She called out to the brown haired woman in blue who like the rest of the group was now starting to shake off the affects of the dead woman's song.

"Yes." Devi answered holding out a small brown bag she'd been wearing on hip towards Mirri.

The black haired woman reached both hands into the bag and tugged, somehow managing to pull a coffin much larger than the bag itself free from the container. It was midnight black in color and embossed in golden thread atop it were the words "Rør ikke katten uden handske".

Mirri dropped it on the ground, flipped it open revealing that give or take a layer of dirt the coffin seemed to be upholstered more finely than most thrones.

"Wake me when all this aquatic foolishness is over with, I'm gonna grab a quick batnap." She told the group before jumping into the coffin, laying back to relax and slamming the lid shut.

"Mirri… what's going on?" James Firecat asked in confusion, clearly suffering from a bit more in the way of stupefaction than even his companions had.

Florence Bastien bent down next to the dead woman and took a long look at her unnatural features.

"You do us all a disservice sister, where water is tainted nothing good can grow." She declared solemnly.

"So you're telling me that we've finally found something in Tepest that can be accurately described as both 'evil' and 'fey' for once? Think the Inquisition will pay us for her corpse?" Cal Wright inquired as he brought Phoenix up and began to carefully inspect their surroundings in case there were anymore about.

"She was a sirine, a spirit of the sea. They have magically powerful voice, some of them use their song to warn sailors of rocks or other hidden dangers, guiding them to safety when even instinct and knowledge would end up plotting a course towards death. This one..." She began before Alexander cut her off.

"This was one of the more 'fairytale' type sirine. The kind that lures ships onto rocks and makes slaves of anyone who survives." He surmised taking another moment to examine as much of Lake Kronov as he could see.

"I don't think I've ever heard of a 'freshwater sirine' before though… have you Florence?" He wondered.

"You're right on that account Alex, just like one doesn't tend to find dryads springing up in vegetable gardens, sirines normally prefer seas and oceans. I don't think I've ever encountered one that lived in a lake before..." She pondered.

"Well so long as she's dead I don't think we need to spend much more time worrying about her. No offense Aroun." Cal reflected, this time managing to catch himself before committing another verbal faux paus.

"none taken." The giest replied with his usual mix of stoicism and apathy.

"That island… I need to get out to that island!" He suddenly added with increasing vigor.

"Compared to other problems I've been faced with that's not such a big one. We've still got a boat and the waves seemed to have died down a little now that their mistress has been dealt with. Florence would you mind coming with me? I'll take care of rowing if you secure Mirri's coffin for the trip. My instinct tells me that no castle which looks that dilapidated is going to be completely free of undead." Alexander suggested.

"If Mirri is going so should I!" James Firecat insisted, finally seeming to have gotten his head on straight again.

"If you can find a way to fit in the boat you're welcome to come James." Alexander offered.

"I need to go. I need to go." Aroun repeated, the tone of his voice making it clear that he expected someone to stay behind so that there would be room for him in the boat also.

Alexander slowly walked over and attempted to gently wrap an arm around the dead man's shoulder. He failed, but only because the shoulder in question was less substantial than the magical fog which had recently surrounded them.

"Aroun, you're dead. If you'll look down, you'll notice that you haven't made any footprints on the ground for this entire trip. I'm willing to make a very large wager that you can 'walk' on, or at least float over the water.

On the off chance that I'm wrong on that front, I am completely certain that, being dead, it is truly, and utterly impossible for you to drown. You'll be able to cross to that island without a boat even if you have to do it along the lake bed." The blond haired man promised the giest.

He did it in the sort of half reassuring half pitying voice that a father might use when dealing with a child who was afraid to go for a walk in the woods because they might be attacked by wolves… if their last name was Timothy.

"You're sure?" Aroun asked in a voice that mixed confusion and uncertainty.

While Mirri Catwarrior had taken to undeath in general and vamprisim in particular like a bat to the sky, it was clear that Aroun was going to be a bit of a slow learner.

"Give it a try." Alexander offered, he would have promised to hold the other man's hand, but Aroun's intangibility would have promptly made him a liar.

Aroun took a few hesitant steps out into the water, and sure enough it seemed to bear his weight (or lack there of) without complaint.

"Cal, Devi, you two look after each other while we're away, if anything strange starts to happen don't be afraid to head further away from the lake." Alexander advised before hoping into the boat and taking up position next to the oars.

XXX XXX XXX

The boat managed to make the trip to Castle Island without ever being in serious risk of capsizing, though it did a fair amount of rocking back and forth as the waves brushed up against it.

Once the boat had been safely 'docked' (in the sense of "dragged aground") on the sandy beaches of Castle Island, a small red furred cat hopped out of it. Sad cat mewed, stretched, and kept right on stretching as its bones, muscle, and body overall began to elongate itself back into the shape of James Firecat, clothing not the least bit disheveled by the process.

The young lycanthrope then helped Alexander lift Mirri's black coffin off of the boat and rest it gently on the ground before James beat out a few quick taps on its lid. The lid flipped open and Mirri Catwarrior emerged from it in one singular smooth motion that shouldn't quite have been possible.

"Oh hey, dry land again, thanks for taking care of the hard part Sir!" She commented cheerfully enough.

"Believe me, there was nothing I wanted so much as a young boy as the chance to spend my life ferrying a vampire around." Alexander declared sarcastically before pointing a black gloved finger toward the ruins of the castle.

"If there are any ghosts or other undead in there I expect you to draw their attention and deal with them." He insisted.

Alexander Diamondclaw had not been lying when he told Wyan that there were few people in the world more suited to dealing with the Winter Children of Math Mathonwy than Mirri Catwarrior, even if he had omitted the fact that it was primarily because she was among them.

Ghouls and ghasts could not freeze her in place with their touch, ghosts could not bring about age that would sap the strength from her limbs, (indeed some (frequently derided) philosophers argued that the touch of a ghost would actually make a vampire stronger!) mummies could inflict no illness upon her, negative energy if bestowed by the blows of wrights or others vampires would only make her stronger.

A powerful cleric could force the undead to fall back from their presence, a powerful vampire would be immune to their abilities even if taken by surprise and able to rip them limb from limb, or tear their ectoplasmic forms to shreds.

"Anything in particular I should be looking out for Aroun?" Mirri asked her fellow undead before approaching the castle.

"My body." The giest answered at once.

"Well I took that as a given, anything else?" Mirri more or less repeated her question.

"My body!" Aroun flatly repeated his answer.

"Jeez, if you keep insisting on being so self centered I might think you were still alive." Mirri huffed clearly not about to get any useful information about the ruins from him.

So seeing no better way to approach the mater, Mirri began to walk towards the ruin's most obvious entrance, three wide steps leading up to a pair of weathered iron doors.

The doors were artfully created the faces of hideous fanged beasts, their lolling tongues curled into knockers. A brief touch promptly revealed them to have long ago rusted in place. The hinges were likewise corroded though they showed signs of at least occasional use.

Mirri tried the open the doors but found that they resisted her pull.

"Given you'll probably get mad at me if I just bash the door down without any considering other options Sir, I think you should take a shot at this one Kitten." Mirri commanded.

James Firecat was only too happy to spend a few moments inspecting the state of the doors. As the group's master of traps and locks he was the only one to exceed Cal Wright's knowledge of mechanisms in any area. He only needed about ten seconds of intense study to come to a conclusion.

"No lock, no traps, the door is just warped." He declared confidently.

"Oh I know what that mean! Kitten you take the left I'll handle the right." Mirri declared excitedly.

Before Alexander could counter that order (not that he had any particular reason to) the pair took up positions and both slammed their shoulders firmly against the doors.

Iron bent and broke beneath the force of their mystically empowered muscles and after a few goods heaves they'd battered the doors open, most likely never to close again.

On the other side of the broken door they found themselves in a large lobby. Its crumbling walls were painted with fading blue and white swirl pattens.

The floor was covered with a mosaic that depicted a malestorm of water draining into the gaping maw of some unknown monster, all that could be seen of the monster were its fangs and the darkness of its gullet.

The drawing was so large that it'd be impossible to cross from one side of the room to the other without stepping across the beast's maw. Alexander took one good look at this 'interesting' piece of artwork and placed a firm hand on the shoulder of both James and Mirri.

"Neither of you go anywhere for a moment. Florence is that thing magical?" He asked while twitching his head in the paintings direction.

A few quickly chanted words later and Florence shook her head, as far as her own powers could detect there was nothing the least bit magical about the painting.

"Okay, lets keep moving then, just better safe than sorry. Besides, I'm sure Cal would have some choice words for me if I had to explain him to a painting managed to ambush us." He admitted with a half grin.

Secure in the knowledge that the mosaic was possessed no occult abilities James did a quick sweep for more mundane dangers (of which he found none) and Mirri proceeded on her way.

The monster depicted in the mosaic remained utterly unmoving and still as the group trod upon its maw, exactly the way depictions of a frightening beasts have a tendency to do.

With that particular "danger" surmounted the group were next confronted with a locked door. Almost instantly bright shining tools appeared in James Firecat's hands after taking a moment to recall which of his many pockets he'd left them in.

The lock itself presented no real challenge to his nimble fingers and the was door swiftly opened. As the smell of the room beyond wafted out to great them each member of the group wrinkled their nose in disgust.

The air was heavy with the oily smell of filth and decay. Bloated black flies buzzed to and fro seeming to revel in the offensive stench. The frayed remains of what had once been a fine rug covered the center of the room while a table and three chair stood in one corner, all gray with rot. To the south, a short hallway draped with spider webs ended at a battered door.

Still no further foes presented themselves and as the battered door proved to be unlocked they pressed on in a good time. Inside the next room a casual glance alone was enough to make it clear that the place had once been an elegant tower.

The floor was a cracked and faded pattern of green, blue, and white tiles. The tattered remains of an elegant spiral staircase wound upwards along the outer wall, stopping short where the top of the structure seemed to have been sheared off smooth, as if by a gigantic knife.

A pair of bodies both long dead and decayed into little more than skeletons lay just past the doorway to this room. Both wore the crumbling remains of studded leather armor and held rusting scimitars in their mummified hands.

"Mirri..." Alexander whispered his left eye flickering in the direction of the corpses.

The vampire nodded and with steps both light and celeritous approached the two dead bodies. With either hand clenched into a tight fist she dealt them a shattering blow transforming their skulls into little more than scattered bone chips.

"Huh, guess they really were skeletons, well not skeleton skeletons but… whatever." Mirri promptly gave up on her linguistic attempts to wrestle out a proper word which to depict the difference between the bones which made up a body, and the common name for an undead monster composed of said bones.

With that possible danger averted the group pressed on yet again.

The instant that they entered into the next room a terrible stench of rot and offal washed over the group. It was impossible not to gag and cough as the odor worked its way insidiously into their nostrils. Nearly as revolting as the smells was the droning of flies, legions of which took wing upon the group's arrival.

The source of the odor is impossible to miss, two rotting bodies lay against the far walls, their skin dotted by sickly white maggots and black flesh eating beetles. At the sight of one of those bodies Aroun rushed forward and wrapped his arms tenderly around it.

Enough of the corpse's hair and features remained to see that the man's spirit was embracing his mortal remains.

"My body… my body… my body!" He cried ethereal tears of joy at this strange reunion.

His body began to shimmer and give off a bright glow as his eyes seemed to start actively looking AT things instead of simply THROUGH them.

"I, remember it now! I'm Aroun of Viktal. My best friend was Eldrak of Viktal, we were tired of just being fishermen, we wanted something more. One night at the Fisherman's Rest after having a few drinks, I heard a strange voice.

It said that the treasure of my dreams awaited me out on this island. All I found out here though was my death. At first we both fell victim to that Fey's voice and she brought us here to be her mindless servants and worked to death. I managed to recover my wits before it was too late, but Eldrak, poor Eldrak, he stabbed stabbed me when I tried to free us both from her enchantment.

It wasn't his fault though, the world is a better place now that you have silenced her sinister song for good." Aroun explained.

Then with a shrug he smiled and gradually began to fade like the last colors of a sunset.

"Terrepopolo, that what the voice which brought my suffering was… you must find the Terrepopolo!" He insisted before his giest vanished completely leaving behind nothing but the echos of his voice and his fallen body.

Before the group had time to make sense of these comments a loan moan, one that speaks of endless pain and suffering filled the air.

It came from the other corpse.

With great sobbing gasps Eldrak's body turned toward the group and lifted its hands slowly. Maggots dropped from the revolting figure as its baleful eyes locked on Alexander's singular one. Although it seemed impossible, the movements of this foul monster made the air yet fouller still.

Almost instantly Alexander had his right gloved hand on Wolfclaw's hilt, ready to dispatch this clearly mindless zombie in one swift blow.

Before he could strike though both of Mirri's hands seized his own to hold them in place.

"Sir, there's no need to spill blood, I'm not hungry." She insisted, half sticking to the group's code even though there was little need for it at the moment.

Alexander's arms relaxed but his face was still a picture of shock as he gazed at the sight before him.

"You're certain? I could swear I've seen zombies that look move alive than he does." The blond haired man insisted.

Mirri shook her head, her keen ears picking up the sound of a heartbeat, the piteous figure before them was not Eldrak's body animated by some necromantic magic, but Eldrak himself just barely clinging to some sliver of life.

"Florence magic him now." Alexander insisted.

The bald woman followed the command and began to recant various spells in her strange tongue which could restore vitality, drive of disease, and otherwise help stave off death.

When those were cast she reached into a pocket of her green outfit and from it produced a single bright red berry.

She pressed it gently into Eldrak's hands silently and without delay he gobbled it up. The tiny meal seemed to add some color to his cheeks and some spark to his eyes as if only now did he come to the same realization that the group had a few moments before, he wasn't dead.

"What… what is going on…?" He croaked out in a confused voice.

Mirri's glasses were still laying broken back on the mainland, so she quickly moved in to handle this situation.

"What happened to you?" She asked calmly.

"She... she took me in with her beauty and her song and then she had her way with me. She beat me, she starved me... It is ever the way with women who seek to use their charming voices and looks to..." He got not further before Mirri took the still weak man by the collar and held him still so that his eyes were forced to meet her own.

"I am the most beautiful woman in the entire world." She declared in a soft gentle voice, the sort a mother would use when comforting a sick child.

"You are the most beautiful woman in the entire world..." The man repeated, his brief period of relative lucidity now thoroughly departed.

"Mirri I'm pretty sure you can't undo the damage he suffered from spending days under the control of one female monster's charm ability by using your own." Florence insisted.

Mirri shrugged adjusting her grip on the man as she now only needed one hand to maintain it.

"Hey, two wrongs might not make a right, but three will make a left. Do you have a magic spell to heal mental trauma that you've been keeping secret from the rest of us?" She teased.

"Not the kind of trauma that he's gone through." Florence sighed and shook her head, which was all the encouragement that the vampire needed to keep right on going.

"That's what I thought. No one is more suited to dusting out this man's mental cobwebs than I am. Now then, what is your name?" She gently asked the charmed man.

"Eldark Mistress." He answered her without a moment's hesitation.

"Very good. Now then Eldark, you are going to take to heart a lesson my favorite blood pack loves to spout off, it is foolish to make assumptions about an entire group of people just because of the way that one member of said group acts.

You are going to stop hating all things female just because of what one of them did to you." She commanded.

"I am going to to stop hating all things female just because of what one of them did to me..." He agreed.

"You are going to have trouble remembering anything that happened ever since you heard that dead bitch's song." She added.

"Which dead bitch?" Eldark asked with complete sincerity.

"Attaboy." Mirri congratulated him.

"Now when I snap my fingers, you will not consciously remember me telling you any of this." She insisted.

"I will not conscious remember you telling me any of this." Eldark nodded.

"Also whenever I click my tongue you will hop on one foot." She added.

"I will hop on one foot." He dreamily echoed.

"MIRRI!" Florence interjected most decisively.

"You people don't let me have any fun." The vampiress sulked.

"Fine, no hopping." She amended.

"No hopping." Eldark agreed.

End Chapter.

AN: The song that the Lady of the Lake (that sirine's name/title) sings to try and charm the group is Danny Boy by Frederic Weatherly, an appropriately Irish themed song given that Tepest is the most Irish domain in the Core.

The song that Mirri gets James to sing in turn is "Bruises and Bitemarks" by Good with Grenades. Like many such songs I've had show up in these stories it is wildly anachronistic in the Ravenloft setting, watch me continuing not to care about that fact. As before James' harmonica is magic/can produce whatever tune he wants it to and probably act as a bardic Countersong once per day.

In theory the Lady of the Lake's song should either induce obedience or have no effect at all, rather than making the other members of the group fall somewhere in between where they just passively stand by while Mirri fights her. My position on "it is not interesting/fun to read/write the entire group ganging up on one foe" has been described before and continues to be in play, you get what you pay for.

Also this adventure as written the Lady of the Lake was basically just a speed bump/an encounter getting as much characterization as Wolfgang got back in Book 3. This issue was somewhat corrected by the Ravenloft Gazetteers (she shows up as a darklord in the fifth one) but by that point the damage has sort of already been done, or at least the Gazetteers don't deal with one major problem… Neither the Adventure Book or the Gazetteer has her actually saying anything/giving a clear description/depiction of how she talks, what her verbal style is like… if you don't know that stuff it makes it really hard to write someone.

I think I did at least a decent job and I managed to hit the high points of her bitter personality even if she isn't going to explain the full story behind it. Said full story is sort of unimportant at the moment so you can go look it up in that Gazetteer if you want to see it yourself or directly ask me about it if you are that curious and I'll tell you.

The joke about "their last name was Timothy" is a reference to the Timothy family who are the Core's most famous/infamous (they have a family tree/pedigree in the Black Box/first released overall setting guide to Ravenloft) natural werewolf bloodline. In short a proper "Timothy" should have no reason at all to ever fear being attacked by wolves, it just doesn't happen anymore than members of the Renier family get inconvenienced in nay way by rats.

Florence does have the Atonement spell which can be used for curing mental trauma caused by past actions that you yourself preformed/ reconciling/changing your alignment, but it's not really the spell that you want for dealing with PTSD. Mirri is using her charm gaze more like hypnotisim here, but given that Eldark is pretty much barely alive at this point, I think it can be forgiven on the grounds that he is in an especially susceptible mental state which is why he quickly falls in line with whatever Mirri tells him to do.


	5. Chapter 5

Monster Party Book 5: Forgive me my mistakes, I'm only human.

Chapter Five: Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang walla walla, bing bang.

With Eldark in an enchanted daze thanks to Mirri's eyes it was possible to convince him to climb into her coffin for the tip back. In his emaciated half dead state he didn't weigh enough to sink the boat and thus the group were able to row away from Castle Island without incident.

They bought a room for him at the Fisherman's Rest, and left the innkeeper with a few of Cal's potions insisting that Eldark be given one to drink (or flat out forced to drink one) every few hours. Alchemy was a touchy subject in Tepest, but healing potions were normally safe enough and if ever there was a man beyond the aid the mundane medicine it was Eldrak.

That done, the six adventurers headed back for Kellee in general and Rima in particular. Their horses helped them make good time, but the new moon and Bryonna's execution was all too rapidly approaching none the less.

Luckily Rima had decided to stay in the same cave as before so the group didn't need to go traipsing about the countryside looking for her. When they entered the cave she was waiting for them alone and she had been clearly doing work with her tarokka deck.

Six cards were laid out before her at the moment: the inverted beast, the inverted traitor, the guildsman, the druid, the raven, and the inverted darklord.

A small wan smile came to her thin lips as she gazed at the group.

"I'm glad to you've survived the trails of Castle Island, though the spirits warned me of still greater dangers ahead. Tell me, was Aroun able to offer you any advice?" She asked calmly.

"Oh he was just a boundless fount of information. Boss even tells me that he gave us a nonsense word that I'm sure will help us save your adopted daughter, treepollen." Cal reflected glumly.

"Terrepopolo." Alexander corrected him instantly.

Rima's wrinkled face contorted itself in deep thought for a moment before she spoke.

"Most curious, that word is one which my people use to describe an evil creature of the forest. I have suspected the presence of such a danger for some time now, but have been unable to determine its source. Perhaps the cards will be more forthcoming know that we know exactly what manner of foe we face..." She explained picking up the half a dozen cards on the ground and shuffling them with the others.

As her aged hands shuffled the deck with speed and sureness that belied their years she repeated the word "terrepopolo" over and over again.

Eventually she dealt out six more cards in the same circular pattern as she had used before. The first card showed a man hanging from the ceiling in chains while swords were heated in a bubbling pot before him.

"Your weapons will be of little use against this enemy. Although diminutive, it is a creature of magic. Let your blades follow rather than lead." She warned them before turning over the next card.

This one was an upside down depiction of a bald-headed man dressed in robes his fast downcast and hands clasped in prayer.

"The power of the terrepopolo lies in the heart and mind. It lives to spread evil, relishing the taste of the corruption that it implants. Heed not the terrepopolo, for its words are death." She declared as she reached for the third card.

The newest revealed card displayed the image of a man in armor with sword at his hip kneeling in supplication before a tall bearded man dressed in robes so dark it was impossible to tell where they ended and where his body began.

"Your enemy is cunning and elusive. It can move about in the daylight, yet remain unseen by the eyes of mankind. Never assume that it is not among for you, for the terrepopolo is an insidious creature." She warned them as her hands reached for the fourth card.

It bore the image of a beautiful woman with a knife in her hand standing over the body of a slain man.

"The terrepopolo speaks in whispers, its words carried on the drifting wind. Quiet and seductive is the voice that has already befouled the ears of the innocent." She intoned solemnly turning her attention to the final card in the circle.

Flipping it over displayed a drawing of a simple child's toy, a puppet wearing a wooden crown. Strings dangled down to reach of its limbs connected to some hidden source.

"There is another force at work here. The terrepopolo has a master whose presence we cannot yet see. His is a darkness so great that even the cards can shed no light upon it." She reflected sagely.

Then her hands settled upon the final card and revealed it to the group.

It needed no great examination, it was the inverted darklord.

Alexander Diamondclaw couldn't help but let out a "satisfied shrug" at the sight of the familiar upside down image.

"I thank you for the reading. I wish the cards had more to say though, while we may no know something of this terrepopolo's nature, I have only a few guesses as to where to find it and no knowledge at all on how to reveal its lies." The blond haired man couldn't help but worry.

Rima yet again waved a finger in his face scoldingly as she picked up her cards.

"So hasty, so very, very, hasty, maybe when you are my age you'll learn some proper patience… While you were on Castle Island, the cards told me something else. At the time I did not understand it. Now, however, I see the meaning.

If your enemy does indeed possess the ability to cloud your eyes, then you must find some means of discovering its hiding place. I believe that your best hope lies in a magical elixir known as the Tincture of Midnight.

Sadly, I know of only one place where you could obtain so valuable a concoction. You must seek out the Three Sisters." The elderly Vistana informed them. Alexander cast a quick glance in his alchemist's direction.

"Cal by any chance do you have a potion on you that reveals the invisible?" Alexander asked.

"Any of them that are a bright enough color could in theory do the job. Though if you mean make it so that people can actually see something that's invisible, not just a rough outline, in that case I'm afraid we are gonna need that Tincture of Midnight. Who are the three sisters though?" The dirty blond haired man replied.

Still more cards flew from Rima's tarroka deck as she quickly chanted what must have been a child's rhyme in an appropriately reedy voice.

"Leticia, Laveeda, Loreen,

One short, one fat, one lean

These three nasty cooks

So different in looks

Are none the less equally mean." She sang as three cards landed face up on the floor before the group.

One of them showed a beautiful woman seated in a luxuriously furnished room, with a glass of wine poured out before her. Another showed a woman seated upon a dark horse as a deep fog began to rise up around her obscuring the legs of her beast. The final card was upside down and displayed a woman in white robes walking through a field of blooming flowers, one of them held gently in her left hand.

"The Three Sisters are hags, from whose cottage few if any return. They are powerful and cunning, but neither so powerful nor so cunning as they would have you believe. Show them neither fear nor disrespect, and they may offer you some manner of bargain for the Tincture of Midnight as they both brew and collect all manner of potions.

Never forget, their own malice is their greatest weakness, for they hate all alike, including each other." She warned them.

In response to this Cal idly pulled out his timepiece, checked that it was still ticking, wound it a little more, then placed it back in the pocket it had come from.

"I'm sorry guys… fresh out of biting sarcasm on this one. We're just straight up fu**ed." He reflected.

"Oh come on, we've been through worse! Alex will keep us safe." James declared with his normal irrepressible smile.

"To seek out the Three Sister's cottage you must go into the Brujamonte Forest south of Viktal. I will at least be able to prepare for a map for you as the sisters are so powerful that they do little to conceal their home..." The Vistana further warned them.

"Well then at least we'll arrive at our certain doom quickly rather than meandering around first!" Cal announced with false joy.

"I thought you said you'd run out of sarcastic comments." Devi noted.

"So did I, that last one just snuck up on me." The alchemist admitted.

"Whatever you do, do not imagine that you will be able to 'sneak up' on the Three Sisters. They will know of your arrival just as I have. Worst still, based on my reading I suspect that the terrepopolo does its evil at the command of another. I have seen his hand, but not his face.

There is a method to the evil that is plaguing our land and it seems that the Mists have chosen you to set things right. Do not dawdle. Make haste, for the fate of my little one is in your hands." She intoned solemnly.

"Do you have any actual good news?" Cal asked rolling his eyes all the while.

"While you were away at Castle Island I put my fire to good use and prepared some food for you. It seemed only fair given the risks you are taking on Bryonna's behalf." She noted in a surprisingly down to earth manner, scooting to the side slightly to reveal a few brown sacks.

Calla Wright bowed his head in supplication to the elderly Vistana and acceptance of this gift, he was getting plenty tired of iron rations as the group continued to ride there horses this way and that across the whole of Tepest.

XXX XXX XXX

The trip to the Three Sister's cottage was a surprisingly dull one, the only event worthy of note was that once they came within a half a mile of their destination the group's horses started to act up and even Florence's best efforts could not calm them.

Tying up their mounts to the most suitable trees nearby the group pressed on, hoping that the animals would be able to fend for themselves or "Clearly they're better at figuring out odds than we are." as Cal put it.

Less than a half an hour walk later they were finally able to lay eyes upon the home of the Three Sisters. Standing before the six was a simple cottage in the middle of a weed-choked clearing. This small unpainted structure had a thatched roof and no windows.

Smoke rose from a chimney made of rough-hewn stones. All in all it looked to offer warmth and shelter from the steady drizzle that never seemed to quite depart from Tepest. As they drew nearer a faint odor began to pervade the air.

It was partially obscured by the rain and smell of smoke, but the stench of rotting flesh soon became impossible to miss.

Almost lost among the tangle of weeds and tall grasses around the cottage were the bones of several dozen creatures. Bits of decaying flesh still clung to these bones, hinting that there were some places even those who feasted upon carrion found utterly repulsive.

Alexander raised a fist to knock but before he could touch the door a voice spoke cried out from inside.

"No need to knock deary, come in come in, the more merrier!" A high pitched cackle declared so ominously that Cal found himself taking a step back out of pure reflex.

Alexander Diamondclaw however steeled himself for the horrors that no doubt lay within and open the door.

The cabin was no less rustic on the inside with unpainted walls and rough floorboards. A fire roared in the stone heart, filling the air with a smoky haze, but even that was not enough to obscure the horrors which lay before him.

The room was scattered with bits of bodies, all of which had been partially eaten, while the floor and walls were almost stained black with blood and ichor. Beneath the acrid smoke hung the sickeningly sweet smell of decay.

Seated at a table in the room are three hideous creatures.

One of them was a short squat plump figure with sickly yellow skin whose body was covered by open sores oozing a strange white fluid. Her eyes were large black pools with red pupils in the middle while the face that surrounded them was distorted by bony protrusions. Her hair was a tangled green and brown mass that didn't just look like seaweed, but rotting seaweed.

The next one was as large as the first was small, even hunched over she was still taller than Alexander's impressive height! Her skin was a shiny blue black, the color of a fresh bruise. Her mouth had grown a pair of fangs much too large for her face, leaving ropey strands of drool to dangle from her gaping maw as her small and black eyes focused on Alexander.

The final one was a diminutive figure with pebbly greenish-brown skin not unlike a toad's. Her knotted black hair resembled a tangle of vines, while her large bright orange eyes with their vertically slit pupils would put one in mind of more dangerous reptiles.

On the table before them lay the partially eaten body of a goblin. Its legs and arms were missing, but its torso and head remained untouched for the moment.

Then the creature's jaundiced yellow eyes blinked.

The half eaten monster was still alive, though probably not for too much longer if it had any luck based on the blood stained cutlery all three of the hideous hags held.

It was at this point that James Firecat who had been eagerly trying to see exactly what was going on a moment ago turned away in horror. The surround smells were soon made worse yet by the acidic stench a half digested meal being expelled atop the rotting bodies outside.

For good or ill the The Sisters took no offense at this, either quite used to others' revulsion or not noticing as their six eyes all seemed to intently focused on the tall man standing in their doorway.

"It appears we have company for dinner we do..." Cackled the largest of the crones happily, her voice so horrific that the way her fangs left the words slightly garbled could only be considered an improvement.

Looking up from her monstrous feast she licked the blood from her cracked lips.

"We always welcome guests for dinner. But I'm wondering what brings such fine looking folk to our home I am, Speak quickly and ye might keep your heads, ye might!" She chortled even as the other two continued to consume still more bits and pieces of goblin flesh.

"The Tincture of Midnight." Alexander answered keeping his voice cool and calm, allowing nothing in either his words or his body language to declare how badly the group needed that particular potion.

The hags slowly put down their cutlery and leaned across the table slightly before beginning a quickly whispered conversation amongst themselves. The keener eared members of the group were just barely able to make out the words "tasty", "tender", "big" and "many" being among those spoken.

When the impromptu conference concluded it was the smallest of the three who spoke for them.

"You are very brave to come here, pretties, very brave. Ordinarily we would not hear your words, but these are not ordinary times. You present us with an interesting opportunity, you do.

This tasty goblin was supposed to retrieve something for us, and was foolish enough to fail, it was. If you can obtain what he cold not, we shall give you what you ask, we shall. Well pretties, can you best a few goblins for your precious tincture?" The hag demanded.

Alexander looked down at the half eaten goblin. So far as he was concerned there was nothing in the world that deserved a fate like that. There were however plenty of monsters who had managed to go entirely too long without becoming acquainted with Wolf Claw.

"Goblins don't frighten me. What do you want retrieved?" Alexander asked once again keeping his voice steady, not directly stating if he would accept or refuse the hag's offer.

This time it was the plumpest of the trio who spoke.

"In a cave to the east you'll find a shiny thing, you will; a shinning ring of gold and silver set with a brilliant emerald. Bring us this ring. Should you try to flee with it, we will find you, and when we do, you'll envy our little goblin friend here, you will." She croaked out.

"Go now, and be quick. Our patience is not as enduring as our beauty, you know, and if you don't want us to eat you anyway, you might want to bring us another goblin or two as a snack, you might!" All three spoke at once.

Alexander said nothing, closed the door to the cabin and took a single long step back.

"That could have gone worse." He reflected.

"Do you think we'll end up doing more harm for Tepest than good for Bryonna if we get them back their ring?" James Firecat couldn't help but ask, his normally high spirits somewhat deflated by the cannibalistic consumption he had just witnessed.

"We'll need to discover exactly what sort of powers this ring gives its wearer first. I doubt that it could be anything to truly world shattering, otherwise they would have gone after it themselves rather than sending lackeys." Alexander reassured him.

"Unless whatever it is proves to be so powerful that even those witches fear it. Granted, if it is then once we get our hands on it..." Cal reflected as he curled his hand into a fist and flicked it back and forth as if aiming his knuckles at invisible targets.

"The Mists crave suffering but not always of the virtuous. If the Three Sisters were foolish enough to place the tools of their undoing into my hands I won't shy away from the deed." Alexander promised.

"By the way Florence, I know its said that hags are something other than human, do they count as..." Devi began.

"No." Florence Bastien 'answered' her before she could even properly shape the question.

"So they're not fey?" Devi insisted on getting her words in edgewise all the same just to be sure.

"Not even close. If you must know the difference is fairly simple. For all their foolish superstition the people of Tepest are not entirely wrong when they see a divide between the "Children of Spring" and the "Children of Autumn" considering fey the former and hags among the latter.

Fey are spirits of the natural world who craft for themselves bodies composed of mortal materials, selecting a form that they find pleasing to inhabit.

There are many different types of course: pixies float through the air, sirines frolic in the seas, dryads, are at home among the trees tending to their groves. Please note that our bodies are composed from mortal materials, unlike elementals which come from another world and bring pieces of that world with them.

We trade a truly immortal but ephemeral existence for one where we are merely without age, but still quite vulnerable to knife and spell. Some of us do of it of our own volition, though many like me are called to the moral realm for the sake of others.

The grove that called me here was too beautiful to go without protecting… until I realized that it was also too small to make a difference." Florence explained, her voice growing much more bitter and harsh than normal.

"Hags on the other hand, are corrupted demi-humans.

There are fey who do good, and fey who do evil in the world… even leaving aside the issue of our monstrous cousins. I have yet to meet a hag who was not some manner of spiteful crone. Perhaps that simply a matter of not having traveled far enough or lived long enough, but I rather doubt it. They twist and defile magic that they should have never sought in the first place." Florence declared solemnly.

"What about Natalya and Elena back in Vorostokov? They seemed nice enough, they even saved Cal from a bunch of werewolves!" James Firecat piped up.

"Hey, I had more or less saved myself at that point! I'd already realized that since they didn't have a hybrid shape they wouldn't be able to climb up a tree after me, I was just taking a moment to catch my breath before loosing them in a daring escape by jumping from branch to branch." Cal Wright insisted.

Nine dubious eyes turned dubiously in his direction.

"I'm not saying that they weren't welcome at the time..." Cal admitted with a huff.

"They also were going to magic you into staying with them as their pet Kitten." Mirri pointed out.

Alexander coughed loudly not wanting to have this particular argument continue while there was work to be done and they still stood only a few steps outside the Three Sister's cottage.

"Lets leave the question of the exact moral and ethical outlook of hags as a whole to Doctor Van Richten. For the moment, we have more important things to worry about, we need to get our hands on that ring they want back, find out what it does if at all possible. Hopefully it will prove to be nothing but a harmless trinket we can safely return to the hags in exchange for the Tincture of Midnight, which we can use to prove Bryonna's innocence." The blond haired man commanded.

No one could think of a good reason to argue with him.

End Chapter.

AN: The sad thing is I don't want to suggest that James has a weak constitution (if anything it's probably one of his best stats given that he's a lycanthrope and he takes a lot of "punishment" from Mirri without it getting to him) but at the same time, now we've seen him wretch in Book 2, Nosos Novella, and now this one. Granted in Book 2 and right here its because of the subject of cannibalism/the eating of sentient life in general, and Book 1 makes it pretty clear why that is such a major issue for him.

Guess it all goes back to Kurt Vonnegut and one of his famous sayings about writing fiction " **Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them, in order that the reader may see what they are made of."**

 **Also if you look at a deck of Tarokka cards or a description of one you can see what cards have come up when Rima did her reading, that or you can ask me about them, either one works.**

 **I changed up the names of one of the three sisters (normally it is Laveeda, Leticia and Lorinda) so that I could get that particular rhyme/chant to work, not sure why I felt the need to use it but that lit bit taken from Fantastic Mr. Fox seemed to work in this particular setting/I felt it added a nice fairytale touch to things.**


	6. Chapter 6

Monster Party Chapter Book Five: Forgive me my mistakes, I'm only human.

Chapter Six: Near a tree by a river there's a hole in the ground…

The group headed east as the Three Sisters had directed them to, keeping their eyes out for any caves.

As they moved through the dark forest Alexander ended up almost tripping over a pair of corpses whose presence took him by surprise.

A brief examination of their badly mutilated forms suggested that they were goblins that had suffered tremendous tears and lacerations. Close by were some broken spears and bent daggers, suggesting the goblins had tired to fight back, but most likely without much success.

The six moved a little slower after that, and they ended up seeing more fallen goblins, suggesting that it was not pure cowardice alone which had lead to a very unfortunate goblin failing the task he'd been assigned.

Eventually the woods came to a sudden end at the edge of a large circular clearing. Some fifty feet away on the other side of a slick muddy expanse was a stone outcropping. Crude masons seem to have carved the rock into the primitive shape of a skull.

The mouth of this stone death's head hung open, clearly offering entrance to some underground chamber. The rain fell steadily, drenching the dozens of goblin bodies strewn around the muddy clearing.

Unlike the other remains they'd seen though, these were not warriors or hunters.

Here the goblin bodies were smaller and some had flaps of loose skin which suggested they might have been with child, before their stomachs were torn open. This was, suffice to say, not a promising sign.

Nor was the fact that the cave's head seemed to be extremely narrow to the point that only one person would be able to enter into it at a time. Alexander slid Wolfclaw around so that it hung over his chest rather than his back and began to do a few quick calculations.

"If that place doesn't open up on the other side it'll be too cramped for me to fight effectively." He warned them.

"I can handle this." Florence Bastien promised the group.

"We still don't know exactly what did this." Devi pointed out.

"I can handle it." Florence insisted.

No one chose to anger with her and wooden staff in hand she began to approach the ominous cave after muttering a few quick spells for her own benefit.

Her footsteps echoed hollowly as she tread upon the stone floor of the cave. Trickles of rain fell from cracks in the ceiling to form muddy puddles. No fewer than a dozen mutilated goblins littered the floor just ahead of her.

As she moved further into the chamber a low growl filled the air, something like the warning snarl of a wolf, but with an almost reptilian hiss. Then in a blur, something terrible and deformed charged out of the darkness.

Compared to a normal goblin, the one before her was monstrously misshapen and outrageously oversized, standing taller than Alexander Diamondclaw would have. It had yellow fangs which reached halfway down its chest, while its hands were blackened and shriveled with the gore of fallen victims caked beneath long jagged fingernails.

Around one of those monstrous talons, there was a glimmering silver ring. Hunger flashed in its bulbous, orange eyes as it roared in Florence's face, spraying her with fowl smelling spittle.

"You want me to fear you..." Florence declared as she gripped her staff tightly and prepared for battle.

The monstrous goblin hurled itself at her, hoping to use its greater size in conjunction with the tight confines of the cave to defeat Florence, or perhaps this beast simply could imagine no tactic other than direct attack.

Florence took a long step back and readjusted how she held her staff. She managed to position herself just outside the range of the beast's lunge and counter attacked with her staff. One stout wooden end was rammed straight into the goblin monster's head knocking it back and somehow managing to make it uglier still.

"I will not fear you though, there is only one dead thing in all the Core I fear." She declared calmly.

Her monstrous foe prepared itself for another attack, and Florence readied herself as well. The monster lunged for her, but rather than strike with her staff Florence made a swift hand motion, uttered a single word. In an instant the monster's footing went from hard stone to slippery mud.

All of its great strength was of no use as each of its limbs began to flail about in uncoordinated panic trying to maintain its footing. As it began to fall, Florence's staff rose to meat it.

The impact knocked the beast even further back since the same slippery footing which had caused its difficulties in the first place now gave it twice as much trouble.

"I will not hate you either, there is only one dead thing on the Core I hate." She promised the beast, slicing through the air with her hands again as she wove a mystical enchantment.

The monster laid on its back helpless in the mud, which Florence somehow managed to walk across as if it was perfectly firm to her.

"You are simply a weed that needs to be pruned, so I will tend to my garden." Florence promised, before casting yet another spell.

This one caused two sections of the ceiling to give way. One of them slammed into the monster's right arm with such force that it brought new (or perhaps old) meaning to the term disarmed. The other crushed the monster's head quite completely.

Florence shifted her staff to a one handed grip before picked up the arm bearing the ring in the other. She didn't time to use her powers to be certain that the ring in question was magical, but she would have bet rose petals to platinum that it was.

Magical items belonging to hags were rarely beneficial to anyone other than a hag who tried to use them, so it was best to keep the ring at arms reach, quite literally in this case. With a rather satisfied smile on her face, Florence emerged from the caves holding the arm up as proof of her victory.

"What kind of arm is that?" James Firecat couldn't help but ask his eyes eagerly focusing on the shining silver ring.

"The arm of a mindless monster." Florence replied levelly.

"So can your magic tell us what the ring actually does?" Callan Wright couldn't help but wonder.

"Not in the least, that sort of in depth analysis is for sages, not for druids." She admitted.

"I can take a guess what the ring does." Devi Skye declared a touch proudly.

"How do you figure?" Mirri Catwarrior asked turning her attention to the brown haired woman.

"I would guess it is a ring of regeneration, because the fingers just twitched." Devi explained dryly.

Sure enough even completely separated from its body, the arm did not seem quite fully "dead" at the moment. Luckily the most it seemed to be able to do was wiggle its fingers a little rather than anything more dangerous.

"Well I'll keep a careful eye on it all the way back to the Three Sisters." Florence promised, given how she had dealt with the creature itself, managing one of its limbs for a while was no major challenge.

"Wonder what they want with a ring of regeneration?" James pondered idly.

Five minds which were much less innocent than James' all but instantly came to the obvious answer.

None of them cared to voice it aloud for equally obvious reasons.

"Might as well bring them one of the goblins they wanted, now that they're dead it hardly makes much of a difference." Alexander Diamondclaw reflected and easily hefted one of the fallen monsters.

Then his mind abruptly flashed back to the words he had refused to utter aloud and dropped the corpse to the ground.

"On second thought, I already feel like enough of an errand boy." The blond haired man declared with conviction.

XXX XXX XXX

"Here is your ring back." Alexander declared standing in the doorway to the Three Sisters' cabin, once again keeping himself planted firmly between the hags and his companions.

He tossed the severed limb onto the table, glad to see that there was now nothing left of the goblin.

Almost instantly a viscous tug of war broke out between the hags, each one trying to lay claim the ring while hurling curses (thankfully mundane rather than magical) at the other two.

Eventually the arm was torn to shreds and the largest of the sisters managed to seize the ring. Clutching it tightly she turned to face Alexander.

"Thank you pretties, for returning our ring, we've missed it we have, especially at dinner." The other two rose from their seats glaring at Alexander, their hands starting to weave complex patterns in the air.

"Just one more thing before you can have your precious tincture… one of you must wear the ring and join us for dinner..." The smallest crones declared ominously.

"And lunch!" Added a second.

"And breakfast!" Cackled the third.

Mirri began to step forward a tongue darting between her lips for a moment.

"You know Sir, its been a while since James and I had a meal together, I'd be open to an interesting dining experience." Mirri suggested.

Alexander abruptly barred her way.

"Down girl, I don't see any reason for this turn to into another game of who gets to hold the cutlery.

I've heard you ladies are even more brilliant than you are lovely, would you care for a riddle competition? If you can best me then all six of us will join you for a meal, if we win you'll give us what we came for." Alexander offered.

Cal looked like he wanted to object to any offer which would possibly lead to him joining the hags "for dinner" but Devi promptly elbowed him in the stomach before he could get so much as a word out.

The hags let loose with wet unpleasant sounding laughs and then they began to chant the verses of a riddle, changing off which spoke between each line.

"I walk on four legs at the beginning of the day, two legs in the middle, and three legs at end. What am I?" They asked.

Alexander's single visible green eye rolled.

"A human being, the day is his life, and the third leg is a cane. My turn.

I am stronger than chains of iron. No power can break me. No tempest can topple me. I can endure wars, plague, and even famine without being diminished. I am cherished both by king and pauper though both are freely endowed with my graces. What am I?" Six eyes opened wide, either shocked at the ease with which Alexander had dissected their riddle or the confounding nature of the one he had presented them with.

The trio buried their heads deeply together for several long moments discussing ideas before they finally came to a conclusion.

"The invigoration of hatred. Our turn once more. Shining mirror of the soul, never empty but only sometimes full." They answered.

Alexander's squinted in confusion for a moment, not at their riddle, but at the response he had gotten to his own.

"You really think the answer to my riddle is hatred? Well let us move on, the answer to yours is the moon. Now then, let me give you another one worthy of your intellect.

What is hard in the morning, soft for most of the day, but hard again all night?" Alexander asked.

No sooner were the words of his mouth than Cal suddenly seemed to have developed a bad coughing fit.

The sisters huddled together and discussed the possibility before they finally came up with an answer.

"A coward's resolve. Each morning he vows to himself to be brave, but he flees from danger all day long and vows not to do it again at night." They declared.

Alexander pondered that for a moment and shrugged.

"Heh, as good an answer as any, say on with your own riddle."

"Thirty black horses upon a black hill, first we champ, then we stamp, then we stand still. What are we?" For the first time Alexander seemed slightly put out by one of the sister's questions, but then his single green zeroed in on their faces more closely.

"Ahh, your teeth." He answered flashing his own pearly whites having noticed what a deep obsidian color the witches' molars were.

They could not dispute the accuracy of this answer and so it was the adventure's turn again.

"My two fruit fell at the exact same time. Yet, even having dropped, they both still bounce when their branch shakes. What am I?" He asked the sisters.

Yet another huddle broke out this one even longer.

"A morningstar." They eventually responded.

"A morningstar? Care to explain the logic behind that answer?" He demanded.

"Bah, foolish pretty. A morningstar, a stick with two pointy spheres attached to the handle being used to attack." They crowed triumphantly.

Cal now seemed to be torn between mortification and perverse delight.

"Sounds like they've got you and your spiked balls all figured out Boss." He whispered just loud enough for Alexander to hear.

Rejoicing at having correctly resolved Alexander's riddle the witches asked another of him.

"Brothers and sisters I have none, yet that man's father is my grandfather's son, who am I?" They demanded to know.

Alexander instantly turned a black gloved hand inward to point at himself.

"The speaker is talking about himself. My turn again." The blond haired man replied.

"A pretty lady makes me stand at attention, but the orders of a general are barely worth a mention.

I hold lovers together, even against their will, make sure that not a single drop is allowed to spill. What am I?" He asked, this time it was Florence who suddenly looked like she was on the verge of being ill.

Alexander just took that as more proof of how good he was at asking riddles, he'd even managed to make that one rhyme!

"A drunken soldier. The third line refers to him forcing himself on a woman." The witches eventually cackled clearly some delight in the prospect of forced intercourse.

"What can I say, you ladies continue to see right through me, ask your own riddle once more." Alexander congratulated them.

"The man who made it doesn't want it. The man who buys it doesn't need it. The man who needs it doesn't know it. What is it?" The hags asked.

"A coffin!" Mirri announced triumphantly.

"That's cheating!" One of the hags abruptly hissed.

"There are three of you and only one of me, and we've hardly established rules on if my companions are allowed to help me or not. That said, let me not be so crass as to make up rules ex post facto. You can ask me another." Alexander offered.

"Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet." The hags hissed.

Alexander thought about that one for a while, then recalled the countless carcasses they'd seen laying around the cabin.

"Bees building a honeycomb in the corpse of a man." He guessed, most likely correctly based on the way the hag's faces fell.

"The start of all life I do deliver. Ever a stream, but never a river. Pleasure to give and pleasure to take. Sweet alabaster as I make my escape. What am I?" Alexander asked.

This time he had Florence, Devi, and even Mirri looking pale (well paler in Mirri's case) with the sheer "brilliance" of his wordplay.

It took the sisters a good long while to figure this one out, but 'figure it out' they eventually did.

"Mother's milk." They declared without hesitation.

"I really will have to try harder if I want to get something passed you three..." Alexander reflected.

"You have to find your way to through a winding corridor with only two exists, one leading to safety the other to certain doom. They are both have a guard posted before them, one of which always lies the other always tells the truth..." The familiar riddle began.

"If I asked that fellow over there which door leads to safety, what would he tell me?" Alexander interrupted them with the answer.

He was getting tired of this, it was clear that the three sisters would never admit to being wrong, so it was time for him to unleash the riddle to end all riddles.

"In the far away land of _Dementlieu_ each resident owes a tax of five golden coins each year, but a man and a wife together only owes them seven coins. Their tax is decreased by one coin for each child, infirm parent, or grandparent, they support with their labors..." He went on and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, on and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, on and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, on and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, on and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, in this vein for quite a while.

Eventually (very, VERY "eventually") he came to the end of the riddle.

"Given that I am a betrothed raiser of cattle who owns a farm seven acres across and seventeen acres wide over which grazes a heard of three dozen cows while supporting my grandfather, great aunt, half a dozen nieces three nephews and no children of my own, how many golden coins do I owe in taxes each year?" Then he steepled his fingers together and stood there an a look of almost cherubic innocence upon his face as he awaited the hag's answer.

This time they only needed a single glance to come to a firm conclusion.

"That's not a riddle!" They declared angrily.

"Yes it is." Alexander replied.

"No it isn't!" They insisted.

"Yes it is." He pointed out calmly.

"No it isn't! A hideously long listing of dreary facts, followed by some conditional statements is not a riddle! For it to be a riddle there has to be clever wordplay and double meanings involved!" One of the sisters insisted.

"Yes it is. A riddle is any question posed in such a manner that the words which make it up are designed to lead the one being asked astray. I've used up several dozen piece of parchment diagramming out the question I just asked you, would you like me to repeat it? I understand how to three humble sisters like yourselves matters of high fiance might come as something of a shock." Alexander offered, his voice dripping with poisoned kindness.

The three sisters looked like they would rather let Alexander eat them one at a time rather than listen to him repeat his "riddle" a second time.

"No it isn't..." They growled in reply starting to slowly rise from their chairs.

Alexander took a moment to examine a non-existent time piece in his right hand.

"Well would you look at that? Seems I should be going. By the way while you were listening to that riddle, my thief walked right past you and took the time to poke around.

He got his furry paws on every single mixture and potion in this cottage, and my alchemist even had time to determine which one was the Tincture of Midnight. You were kind of to label it 'To discover what you cannot see, apply a drop and count to three' which made things so much easier.

Not only that, but he also had time to apply a coating of adhesive to frame of this door which will be hardening as soon as it is exposed to something other than open air, and my dryad made the construction of this entire cottage firmer than steel. No need me to thank me though!

Finally, I'd suggest you do try to get out more, the art of riddle telling has advanced a lot in the Core recently." Somehow the sheer confidence and charisma with which Alexander delivered his words managed to keep the hags from attacking him so long as he spoke.

When he was done saying his piece, he took one step back, and slammed the door to the cottage closed.

Mere moments later there was a trio of loud crashes as three bodies slammed hopelessly against the closed (and now sealed tight) door through which no one would be entering or leaving any time soon. Alexander dusted his hands off for a moment and then cupped one to his lips to make sure his voice carried.

"By the way, the answer was that he'd owe nothing in the way of taxes, in fact tax man should have given him back three gold, seven silver pieces and one copper!" He bellowed to the hags who were scrambling frantically to find a way out.

Not with much in the way of success though, Alexander's convoluted riddle had given his companions (directed by a few subtle hand motions) plenty of time to transform into their home into their prison.

"This by the way ladies is why no one beats me at riddles, I am a master of thinking outside the box. Though if they refuse to treat me fairly, I'll just put them in one instead." Alexander declared with considerable (and considerably justified) smugness.

"Speaking of boxes..." Cal casually produced a piece of flint and steel and struck them against one another sending a small shower of sparks to the ground.

"They say when in Barovia drink blood like the vampires do. Now that we're in Tepest, why don't we burn witches like the Tepestani, do?" Cal offered clearly intent to turn the trap that Alexander had created into something that would have a decidedly more permanent effect upon the hags."

Alexander just shook his head sadly though.

"Knowing those three, setting this place on fire wold only inconvenience them for a few days at best, and make it a lot easier for them to get out and try to murder us again at worst. Besides, the very magic that Florence used to harden the wood also makes it harder to burn. Speaking of murdering us..." He paused for a moment and pressed his lips against the door though he spoke no louder than normal.

"Since you didn't much care for my last riddle ladies, let me give you another instead... which one of you was supposed to be watching my companions rather than focusing on me to the exclusion of all else?" He inquired.

Then he held out a hand palm open to his companions, and slowly curled down his thumb, pinkie, ring, middle and finally index. As the final digit descended the sound of banging at the cabins door abated, and was promptly replaced by the sound of its occupants hissing still louder and more profane curses at one another.

Clearly the hags were now more concerned with their own internal strife than escape.

"There we go, something tells me that they won't be bothering us or anyone else for a few weeks at least, more likely months. Now lets go save ourselves a damsel in distress." The adventurer suggested.

End Chapter

AN: Before she goes into the cave, Florence is casting her standard "Airwalk" and "Freedom of Movement" buff combo on herself that lets her more or less completely ignore adverse terrain, and then making very good use of it thanks to a few transmute rock to mud spells. Suffice to say, once again magic wins out over raw physical strength.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Alexander Trollenclaw.

I really like how this chapter turned out, if you hadn't guessed that's why I managed to get it uploaded so soon.

The hags riddles are all very famous riddles from various equally famous sources (the first three are all taken straight from the darklords book segment, though of course you probably recognize them from other sources.

As for Alex's riddles, the first one I actually stole as well, it is from the Knights of the Dinner Table where it is presented as a "master riddle" that stumps even the group's smartest member. Granted given that it is said he memorized all the suggested DM riddles, the fact that he fails to guess this one might just say he isn't that great at thinking outside the box, since I myself was able to ball park an answer much better than the three sisters did.

Once they give Alex a less than satisfactory answer he decides that clearly they're never going to admit to having coming up with an incorrect answer to one of his riddles, so he might as well play for time and enjoy himself as he does so.

All of the riddles he asks from that point onward have a certain theme. A really, really obvious theme. If you need me to explain it to you I will. Otherwise, just stand back and marvel at the magnificence of it.

As for how Alex managed to pull off his particular con, he's using a fairly standard psychological technique that lots of con men/thieves employ, the human (or hag) mind can only process so much information at any given time. The old "walk and chew gum" expression is not entirely without merit, on this case, it's really hard to pay any attention to what you're seeing, if you're focusing extra hard on what you're hearing.

Thus James was able to slink into the cottage in his cat form, return to human out of the Sister's line of sight and start pawing through potions, carrying any of them he found interesting back to Cal in cat form carrying them in his teeth.


	7. Chapter 7

Monster Party Book Five: Forgive me my mistakes, I'm only human.

Chapter Seven: So I'm glad I got burned, think of all the things we learned, for the people who are still alive!

The group was in good spirits during their ride back to Viktal, they had the Tincture of Midnight, the Three Sisters would be busy with their own squabbling for a good long while, and even the rain which had dogged them since they'd entered Tepest finally seemed to be letting up.

Then any sense of triumphant relaxation vanished in an instant when their blond haired leader voiced two words.

"Something's burning." Alexander Diamondclaw declared, his nostrils flaring.

He neither needed nor wanted to hear his companions comment on this particular fact, as soon as the words left his mouth he began to snap the reigns and kick the flanks of his mount urging it forward with all possible haste.

Something had gone wrong, the new moon was tomorrow, Wyan had promised him he'd wait for new moon! As Alexander's gray steed thundered into Viktal he found more or less the entire turned out and gathered around the village square.

At its center was a tall wooden pole around which firewood and kindling had been piled. Oil glistened on the timbers, suggesting that once it started burning it'd be unstoppable.

Four people stood near the pyre, two of them were inquisitors dressed in plain robes. Then there was Wyan holding a heavy tomb of scriptures in his hands, and Lorelei, her features looking strangely cold in the light of a blazing torch she clutched in her good arm.

Wyan was speaking to all those present and his powerful voice carried easily to Alexander's ears.

"Bryonna of Viktal, though I call you such only because you've refused to tell us your true name, you have confessed your guilt. You have admitted that you are not truly human, but instead a Fey having taken human form. In this shape you bespelled Ivan of Darkon, and cursed my daughter Lorelei!

For these crimes I condemn you to burn at the stake! If any here doubt the righteousness of my decision, look to the skies! The sun shines upon us, Belenus himself smiles down upon us!" The Inquisitor announced.

Alexander thought about trying to approach this particular situation through calm and rational debate.

He thought about it for all of a half a second.

Then he dug a black gloved hand into his pockets as he dismounted, swiftly pushing his way forward until he'd reached the front of the crowd.

"I'd like to offer some new evidence." Alexander shouted at the top of his lungs before popping the bottle's top and swung it about wildly.

The oily blue-black mixture flew forth and splattered itself across Wyan, his daughter, and the two inquisitors. This made for three slightly soggy inquisitors, and one inquisitor's daughter who suddenly had more company than she did a moment ago.

On Lorelei's left shoulder sat a tiny green woman with bright yellow eyes. The tiny woman seemed to come to grips with the fact that other people could see her no more quickly than everyone else could comprehend her sudden appearance.

Wyan and many other inquisitors began to make various signs against evil and the word "boowray" began to ripple up and down the crowd.

"Seems they've found us out love." The "boowray" reflected looking at its now visible hands.

"The Prince will have to find another girly to do his work now, bye!" She declared mockingly before unfurling a pair of gossamer wings leaping into the air and taking flight.

"You can't leave me, not yet, not yet!" Lorelei pleaded with the fleeing fey.

"You said if Bryonna died then Ivan would love me again! You have to hold up your end of the bargain, you have to, I'll hold up mine..." She screamed and then with strength and speed born of madness she hurled the blazing torch.

The next few seconds passed like and eternity for Alexander Diamondclaw.

He like everyone else present was helpless to do anything but strike foot to ground and reach forward in vain as the burning brand landed at the feet of Bryonna's pyre. Almost instantly the wooden kindling sprinkled about at the base of the pole began ignite.

Somewhere in the back of his mind the blond haired man heard a sharp cracking sound, but he didn't pay any attention to it, it didn't matter. Nothing mattered right now, nothing except what laid directly before him, an innocent woman about to be burned alive.

"No." Alexander Diamondclaw practically whispered.

Almost as if his limbs had begun acting of their own will Alexander suddenly discovered that his right hand was reaching for his eye patch.

"No." He repeated the word and balled the hand into a fist.

"No." He said the word a third time and then started walking forward.

Alexander Diamondclaw approached Bryonna's pyre like an avalanche approaches the bottom of a hill, to stand in his way or try to hold him back was obviously futile folly.

His black boots trod upon the burning wood as the fire grew with each passing second. His one good eye looked into Bryonna's.

"What are you doing?" She asked in confusion as the flames rose hungrily, ready to consume both of them next.

"Proving why I'm still better than any three goblins." Alexander answered as he wrapped his hands around the stake before a combination of flames and smoke obscured both of them from sight.

A moment later there was a groan and then the stake that Bryonna was bound to went rocketing out of pyre, flipping end over end several times before planting itself horizontally in the ground with almost pin point precision about five feet to the left of James Firecat.

The young man needed no encouragement, almost instantly knives were in his hands and the ropes holding Bryonna were slashed allowing her to fall into his waiting arms.

A moment after that act was completed there was another sharp crack.

Meanwhile the pyre kept burning, and a few moments later Alexander Diamondclaw stepped out of it, then casually "huffed" out a quick breath extinguishing a section of his hair that had caught fire.

"FEY!" Wyan two fellow inquisitors wasted no time in pointing accusing fingers in his direction.

In response Alexander began to kick off his boots and unbutton his black jacket.

"Even if I was Fey, shouldn't I be a naked Fey?" He replied, continuing to disrobe and revealing a simple white undershirt and pair of pants.

"The reason I'm not is because this outfit has been blessed by a powerful cleric of Belenus. It can withstand the hottest flames and grant protection against them to any who wears them. If you do not believe me, don them yourselves and give them a try." He offered.

Unsurprisingly, neither of the two inquisitors seemed ready to risk the flames to disprove this explanations, especially not when their leader had recently (very, very, VERY recently) just been proven disastrously wrong (very, very, VERY wrong) on the subject of telling Fey from humans.

Lorelei seeing that Bryonna had managed to survive despite her best efforts collapsed on the ground, sobbing in a mix of pain, sorrow, and impotent rage.

Wyan placed a hand on her shoulder in a hopeless attempt at comfort before he turned to his subordinates.

"Arrest her… and take her to one of the cells beneath the church." He said in much the same tone of voice a man might use to give the order that he was to be buried alive.

The solemn sorrow of the moment was shattered by a great deal of high pitched cursing.

Preeminent among them were statements concerning anatomically impossible acts a certain boot and its owner supposedly should preform.

The crowd parted slightly and Cal Wright choose that moment to dramatically blow a puff of smoke away from Phoenix's barrel.

He had a wide smile on his face and his foe well in hand, or under foot at least. The alchemist's expertly aimed bullet had punched a large hole in one of the small creature's wings, sending it plummeting to the ground.

The monster had been reduced to crawling pathetically around the ground in fear, until Cal had arrived on the scene and planting his right foot atop the boowray.

"Yeah, yeah, keep talking. Some people might have been impressed or worried when their first bullet bounced off you. Me? I just loaded a blessed one and tried again.

Now, I'm about five times as tall as you, that means I probably weigh at least ten times as much as you do. That's just the square cube law talking, it isn't even taking into account the possibility that you have hollow bones like a bird.

Right now I'm just resting my foot on you, what do you think would happen if I decided to pressing down?" Cal inquired glaring down at his captive who abruptly went silent.

"Yep, that's what I think would happen too. I really don't know why people keep telling me mathematics isn't fun..." The alchemist gloated.

"Alexander Diamondclaw, I need you to join me in the temple." Wyan insisted suddenly.

XXX XXX XXX

"What… what happened out there?" Inquisitor Wyan of Viktal could barely gasp out the words, his voice a pathetic wheeze like he had just run a great distance.

He and Alexander were alone inside the temple of Belenus, all the other inquisitors had been dismissed. The only other living souls in the entire building were his daughter and the boowray, both locked away in separate cold iron cells below.

"The life of one woman was saved, and perhaps the soul of another." Alexander reflected.

Rather than sitting before the star like symbol that was supposed to represent Belenus' face (the sun) the blond haired man had gravitated towards a corner of the temple.

A corner which contained a small shrine to the god Diancecht, creator and curer of illness, the only god in the pantheon to be openly worshiped in the temple besides Belenus and his constant companions Manannan mac Lir and Brigantia.

"How… how could I let myself get taken in by this deception? How could I not have seen the truth? You have to understand Alexander, Bryonna confessed everything to me, she told me she was a monster, she called for me to attend on her just so that she could spit those very words into my face last night. If she hadn't, I never would have agreed to burn her today!" The Inquisitor was practically pleading now.

"Constant confinement has a way of breaking people's souls to the point that they no longer wish to live. That, and, was Lorelei able to see Bryonna at all yesterday?" He asked calmly.

Wyan sucked in a deep breath and took a step back as if fearing to be in Alexander's presence.

"My daughter told me that being able to confront the one who had cursed her was necessary, lest Bryonna constantly haunt her dreams even after her physical body was destroyed. So I had her enchanted with the most powerful magical protection imaginable by my priests and let her do it. All those charms and wards, yet still the boowray was able to weave its evil upon her..." Wyan noted soundly doubly disappointed.

"I've heard tales of boowrays myself. They are an insidious menace, the monster might have been temporarily driven away by your protective spells only to return when they expired. What makes them such truly horrific monsters is that given enough time, they can make their victims want their poisoned advice.

As for why I asked, Lorelei might have claimed to Bryonna that unless she confessed to you, she'd see to it that Ivan was found to be her willing consort rather than her victim. That threat, and her life already seemingly forfeit… At the moment neither woman is in any state to be asked about the mater, so I'm merely making guesses." He explained.

"Your guesses seem a great deal more reliable than my own 'knowledgeable' findings." Wyan lamented as he collapsed into one of the pews holding his head in his hands.

"That monster nearly made monsters of my daughter and myself. If the truth ever came to light what I had done, burning an innocent woman on the pyre, no one would ever trust me again, they'd have every right to shun me, or burn me as well!

The entire Inquisition, the entire fight against the Fey in Tepest, it would all be hopelessly discredited in one stroke. Yet more horrific still, what might we have ended up doing to try and hide that truth if we discovered too late?" Wyan lamented.

"Nothing has occurred today that can't be undone except the rising of the sun, take some comfort from that." The blond haired man suggested.

Wyan wiped some moisture from his eyes and sighed heavily.

"Time is out of joint Alexander. This world is no longer our home, no longer made for people like us. It hasn't been since the fall of the Axelords and the corruption of the Cailleaigh.

Now though, now there are those who think that time has slipped even further away from us, that it isn't just Autumn but Winter.

They worry because not so terribly long ago the Fey managed to consume all of Markovia and G'Henna, replacing them with a gaping abyss.

Our greatest days are behind us, all that remains is to collect one final harvest and prepare for the chill of a winter none of us will live to see the end of. Monsters of every stripe are more numerous and powerful these days. The Children of Autumn rejoice for Arwan and Morrigan grant them strength, and whisper that their time has come.

Some days I wonder if I am as foolish as the great Axelord of old who stood on the banks of Lake Kronov and demanded the waves part so that his clothing would remain dry. What hope does one man have in a battle against time and tide?" Wyan reflected morosely, vitality seeming drain out of him more and more with every passing moment.

Alexander crossed the distance between them in an instant and had a reassuring hand on Wyan's shoulder.

"The Fey haven't claimed Markovia, of that you can be certain." He declared calmly.

"What?" Wyan gasped in surprise.

"I've been there recently enough, and so have my companions. It is displaced, no longer part of the Core but instead an island to the north west of it, but it is still there, still whole, and still… not under the control of the Fey." Alexander explained.

The blond haired man decided that the less said about Markovia's current states the better for Wyan's mental health, though the land had hardly been a paradise when it had been Tepest neighbor.

"What of G'Henna?" Wyan pressed.

Alexander could only shrug.

"This world hides many mysteries. If I was to live as long as a Child of Spring I might be able to discover them all. G'Henna might well be an island unconnected to the Core, hidden by some great bank of mist." Alexander admitted.

Some color began to return to Wyan's face.

"So they're not gone, merely misplaced?" He paused and suddenly snapped his finger in delight.

"Ha! That to the Children of Spring! Their greatest strength has always lain deception! This may be Autumn, but it is surely not yet Winter, don't you agree Alexander?" Wyan pressed.

Such weighty theological matters were far from Alexander's favorite topic to discuss. He took a very simple view of religion himself these days. Still, he could not bear to deal Wyan further disappointment given how much he had already suffered today.

"I don't see a reason why that couldn't be the case." Was one of the most noncommittal mealymouthed expressions he'd ever allowed himself to use, probably the most he'd ever used when talking to someone other than Florence Bastien.

Wyan slowly stood up and began to stroke first his mustache then his beard.

"I'd like to think it's so. The great year changes slowly, but it changes all the same. It is a matter I will need to consider at length… though sadly I have a few other matters of much greater importance." Wyan reflected.

"We've both treated Ivan poorly, before this day is through you need to make an official announcement of his and Bryonna's innocence." Alexander suggested.

Wyan nodded in agreement looking down at his hands.

"Yes I do. I need to do that… and I need to revise my methods. The Inquisition is supposed to be a shield for the protecting of Summer's Children not a dagger the Fey can suborn and stab into their very heart." He groaned covering his face with a hand, once again seeming to give into melancholy for the moment.

He crumpled back into the pew before looking up at his companion with pain filled eyes.

"The great year is in Autumn, and in turn I am in the Autumn years of my life Alexander. This was all so much better, so much simpler when I was younger.

Just another child being raised at his father's knee, another woodsman who thought more about cutting down trees rather than doing battle with those that live in the forests.

I wish it didn't have to be like this. I never wanted a war, never wanted to exterminate the Fey, I just wanted to protect what was dear to me, my daughter, my town, my family's future. I wish that I could simply get one of Spring's Children to tell me why they hate us so much….

One who could laugh at death, who could flourish even in the midst of diseases that would kill the strongest of men. If such a being was our friend rather than a foe, what a force for good they could be in this world!

They would never suffer the way I have, to feel as if the years have carried me away from all I ever held dear in the world.

I lost my first wife Dympna to the goblins before we could have children. Then I met Muirne, and my heart knew no greater joy than when she gave birth to Lorelei.

Our second child though… a hag put a horrible curse on her and it, the child became so deformed that I lost my wife and my son the day she went into labor. So I focused on looking after Lorelei, so long as I had her, so long as I kept her safe… I hadn't lost all of Muirne, I hadn't lost all the joy I'd had as a younger man.

It was seeing the fear in her eyes, in the eyes of my fellow villagers who refused to go out at night after Markovia and G'Henna vanished, who in some cases refused to even leave their homes in daylight to gather planted crops for fear of the Fey, that was when I knew someone had to do something!

Not that I managed to achieve all that much…. I've probably lost Lorelei now though, in spirit and soul if not in body. The worst part… the worst part is I know it was my fault.

I didn't have the time, didn't have the energy, couldn't be a father, her only remaining parent, and a proper leader to the Inquisition at the same time. There were just so many things that needed to be done..." He paused and picked up the book, flipping through its pages slowly.

"Do you know what this is?" He asked slowly.

"Some manner of sermon?" Alexander guessed.

"Yes, but that's not all it is. This book, this book is the first book written in Tepestani.

We're a proud people with a proud history, but our language existed only as spoken words. A few years back, if every man woman and child vanished suddenly, what would we have left behind? No more more than the Axelords did.

Books are important Alexander, writing is important, you need to record Fey trials so that they can be examined by those who come afterward. You need to tell people how to defend themselves from Fey, not just by shouting it from morning to night and hope people remember.

Faced with so many tasks… perhaps I should have at least been able to determine which ones I truly cared about." He lamented.

Alexander gently took the book from Wyan's unresisting hands and began to flip through it himself.

The people of Tepestani might now have a written language to call their own, but they still did not have an alphabet. Instead, Wyan seemed to have decided to borrow from the Vassi and Balook alphabets and used them to create phonetic representations of spoken Tepestani.

As far as written languages went, it was the most crude way to go about it imaginable. On the other hand… creating a written language…. There were some tasks that boggled even Alexander's mind.

He sat down on the pew next to Wyan.

"Bryonna was able to walk after my friend cut her free. She's had a rough go of it, but I've seen people look worse after shorter stays in prison. You didn't torture her..." It was a statement not a question.

Wyan could only shrug.

"There are some in the inquisition who believe that a 'cold iron' poker when heated to be red hot can win the truth from a fey… but while I have my doubts I could remain silent under such treatment myself, and I doubt the first words I spoke would be the truth.

I have always sought to conduct my investigations as rigorously as possible to avoid… to avoid situations like today. It seems that for all my best efforts I am still quite capable of grievous error." Wyan reflected.

Then he looked up at Alexander sighed very heavily.

"I'm not even sure why I invited you in here… I suppose it was simply because I felt I owed you for the service you have done to save the souls of myself and my daughter."

Alexander slowly and gently turned Wyan so that the two would meat eye to eye and then lounged as best he could in the pew.

"Consider the Axelords. Consider how many warriors they might have once commanded, how completely they controlled over their subjects.

Consider how their power never truly extended further than their own axes. Consider how little is left of them, just a bunch of stories and ruins, nobody is even sure what destroyed them in the first place, it might have been simple infighting it might have been malign Fey influence.

All that remains of them are legends and some pictures scratched on the walls of crumbling ruins. If there's anything to be learned from their failure, it's that things can't stay the same, they simply can't. We children of Summer, we live for a short handful of decades, but we truly live for that time in a way that the Children of Spring will never know.

We have a chance to change and grow, to pass on on something new and greater to those children who come after us. Change starts with the realization of a weakness. You're trying Wyan, you're trying as hard as any man could." Alexander pointed out as he slowly flipped through the book again.

"Given time, given time there might be libraries in Tepest. When that day comes, you'll be considered the finest, no, the first hero of Tepest! The first hero, because you won't be a legend only passed down from father to son, there will be proof of your existence that anyone from anywhere in the Core can come and read about! Wyan of Viktal, the man who did what no one else before him ever had, put the Tepestani language on paper!" The blond haired man declared proudly.

Wyan heaved a heavy sigh and turned around refusing to face Alexander.

"We Tepestani are an insular lot, I won't deny it. I've traveled more than most though, talked to people from lands further away than most.

In Barovia there is no finer hero than Strahd Von Zarovich, a man who liberated his people from the invading Tergs, much like I seek to liberate Tepest from the Fey. Yet even though he was successful, he left behind a legacy of descendants who have become more ruthless and tyrannical with every generation.

Already my daughter may very well be in league with the Fey. It brings little joy to my heart Alexander, to think of the legacy I may leave behind in paper, when the one I leave behind in blood is already so corrupted." Wyan admitted.

Alexander hung his head looking down on the floor and sighed.

"Florence Bastien, who I love with all my heart, she is barren. I'll never, ever, have children of my own bloodline, never be a father. So I speak to you from a position of the greatest ignorance. Still… go see your daughter… something tells me she probably needs to speak to you as baddy as you speak to her." Alexander suggested.

Wyan slowly and unsteadily rose to his feat.

"Thank you. I don't even know why I insisted on inviting you in here on the first place, it is just…." He let the words trail off unsure of how to continue you them.

"Humans are social creatures. We need someone open, honest and trustworthy to talk with. We need to be able to discuss our thoughts or we'd go mad from trying to keep them all bottled inside our heads." The blond haired man suggested.

Wyan nodded in agreement.

"You have wisdom beyond your years, with a gift like that it seems a small thing indeed that Goodmistress Florence is not favored by Daghda.

I had thought I'd be able to discuss anything with Lorelei and she anything with me, but…" Once again the words trailed off though both men knew exactly how this sentence should have ended.

"I'm going to go see her." Wyan finally announced, as if just to have something to say.

The inquisitor departed and Alexander walked over to the that same small shrine he'd started the conversation by and knelt down before it, keeping his voice low so that it wouldn't carry.

"What a force for good he would be indeed." He murmured for Diancecht alone to hear.

End Chapter

AN: The same rules apply as in book four, Alex does not worship Diancecht, Alex only worships a god or goddess that is willing to manifest itself and punch a Darklord in the face.

That said, he finds Diancecht a god he can relate to, he is a rare thing in just about any D&D pantheon, he's a god mostly known for his repentance. In D&D settings (from what I can tell) gods tend to fall into one of three possible categories. 1: Simple good guys (see Belenus, Morninglord Ezra, Halal), 2: Bad guys (Kali, Spider Queen, Wolf God, Zhakata), or passively neutral like the "Clockmaker" "God" who Lamordians "worship" or more accurately simply attribute the creation of the world to.

Diancecht doesn't fit neatly into any of those categories, he means well, but he first he created the Spring People (the Fey) and loved his children too much to properly try to reign them in. He wants to make up for that particular mistake, but isn't sure how to do it. Then he compounded that earlier error by creating diseases, and ever since then he's been trying to make up for it by making cures.

So once again if you look back at Book One/have been paying attention you can probably guess why Alex feels at least some degree of kinship with a god who is known for trying to make up for his past mistakes.

Daghda is widely is another of goddess related for the creation of the Fey, but unlike Diancecht has never tried to make up for this mistake. She's is however the goddess of wild growing weeds, untamed wildness and fertility in general so women will offer prayers to her in private if they are trying to become pregnant.

I will also admit to the fact that one of Wyan's lines here is a slightly/heavily altered (to change the flow, the sentiment it expresses is kept exactly the same) line from Dracula that Van Helsing uses to describe the vampire in question.

As for the "Axelords", they were the "ancient" rulers of Tepest (who may or may have not actually existed) before the it was taken to Ravenloft and the Three Sisters became its darklords. They were called "Axelords" because Axes were their weapons of choice.

Also, during their rule, Tepest was much, MUCH more stratified than it is right now. Different Axelord clans didn't mix with each other, and people were divided along strict gender lines (men hunt and fish women tend to the home) front line warriors are men, spell casters are women, no ifs and or butts, direct rulers always men, most trusted adviser types always women). Granted in "modern" Tepest some of those old gender lines still exist for much the same reason they tended to exist in our own real world societies, but there's no rule/law against a woman hunting for a living, or a stigma against doing it.

Because of the nebulous nature of where exactly the Three Sisters came form, the Axelords may or may have not have ever actually existed, and due to a lack of written version of the Tepestani language all that is left of them is various legends/tall tales.

The Tepestani faith preaches that the world will exist for one "grand year" / "four grand seasons" which are of indeterminate lengths of time. First there was Spring when the Fey ruled and humans were their slaves, but humans eventually rose up, won their freedom and it became Summer. Then while the Axelords ruled, their advisers got corrupted, and it became Autumn as monsters became more plentiful/stronger.

Said advisers would be the "cailleach" that get mentioned, it is Tepestani word for "wise woman" or at least it started out that way, but in modern usage it basically means "Hag"/"Witch". Ironically the Tepestani religion is sort of correct when it argues that "with the corruption of the cailleach the world moved into the summer of autumn" as it was when the Hags became darklords, that things started to get noticeably worse in Tepest, assuming it existed before they became its rulers.


	8. Chapter 8

Monster Party Book Five: Forgive me my mistakes, I'm only human.

Chapter Eight: Here I am, alive among the injured and the dead.

Surprisingly little had happened over the next few days.

The Boowray proved immune to Mirri's "charming personality" and equally resistant to Alexander's more conventional means of interrogation. All it had been willing to admit was that it had been working for something called the Prince of Shadows who had seen a great opportunity for the Boowray to wreak havoc by corrupting the inquisitor's daughter.

The only event of any real note was the somewhat sparsely attended and generally awkward wedding of Bryonna of Viktal and Ivan D'Ogami. It had also marked the only time when Lorelei had been allowed out into the sun when both she and Bryonna requested.

She made for a painfully somber figure, legs still in chains, sobbing through almost the entire ceremony.

Alexander had luckily managed to bring at least a little levity to the proceedings by offering a most peculiar wedding gift to Ivan. One good natured (but very firm) cuffing later, there was nothing in the world that could wipe the smile from the groom's face.

At the moment it was an ungodly early hour and Alexander Diamondclaw was finding himself awoken by a constant hammering on his door in the Fisherman's Rest.

He got dressed in little more than a white shirt and pants before opening it and found Tepest' most powerful inquisitor on the other side.

"I need your help." Pleaded Wyan of Viktal, now looking even worse than he had after the reveal of his daughter's corruption.

If he had not seemed so dreadfully serious, Alexander might have made a joke about how they needed to stop meeting this way.

"With what?" The blond haired man replied a touch gruffly.

"My daughter." Wyan wheezed in a voice suggesting he had run all the way here.

"Why do you even think that I might have a single useful thing to say to..." Alexander began to rant.

"She's been kidnapped!" Wyan clarified.

The door was abruptly slammed in his face.

It stayed that way for about twenty seconds.

Then it swung open and Alexander emerged dressed in his normal outfit with Wolf Claw slung over his shoulders.

"Florence go get the others up and presentable. Wyan, lets go to the temple, tell me everything." The eye-patched man insisted.

If the shorter Wyan had any trouble matching Alexander's long legged strides in his current exhausted condition he didn't show it.

"The worst thing is that it wasn't just my daughter that was taken from the temple, someone also stole the Eye of Vhaeraun!" Wyan warned.

"The who of what now?" Alexander asked pausing for a moment, painfully aware that he sounded more like Callan Wright than his normal self.

"It is a powerful mystical artifact, too powerful. Even just knowing of its existence is dangerous, that is why I told you nothing of it before now.

Several months ago it was found in Lake Kronov by a pair of fishermen, snagged in one of their nets. No sooner had they managed to get back to dry land then they fell to blows over it, and their battle didn't end until one slew the other.

The man who retained possession of the Eye began acting strangely which drew the attention of my inquisitors, and I nearly lost three of them to infighting over it. It was only through deep prayer and meditation that I discovered how the eye spreads its evil magic and put a stop to it." Wyan explained.

"So what exactly does it do? Can it summon up some sort of unstoppable bloodlust and set a man's mind afire with rage?" Alexander guessed.

"No, it is worse than that. It is love. The Eye of Vhaeraun will appear as something you love, the thing you love most above all. Something that you love so greatly and so deeply that you would be willing to kill anyone who tried to separate you from it." Wyan warned.

"What did you..." Alexander began.

"My son. Not deformed and misshapen as he was, but whole and healthy as he should have been." Wyan answered without hesitation, clearly bareing yet another portion of his soul to Alexander.

"What kind of magical precautions were you able to put around this thing to keep it from being stolen?" Alexander insisted on knowing.

"The most powerful my priests could summon. They said that if anyone but I was to touch the Eye and try to take it out of the Temple it would be instantly teleported back inside the locked container where I had sealed it away. I have no idea how anyone or anything was able to so quickly and swiftly overwhelm such potent magical protection" The inquisitor admitted.

Gears turned in Alexander's mind and he came to the obvious conclusion as they entered through the temple doors.

"They did it by not doing it, so to speak at least. I've heard of mystical protections like the ones you've talked about, and they often have a shared flaw; that it is very hard to use magic to link something to one single person.

More often the link ends up being established between that person and a few others very like him, say his brother or..." Alexander began but once again Wyan managed to beat him to the punch.

"His daughter." The mustached man declared as the realization clearly brought him no joy.

"Yes. If the one who took your daughter was the 'Prince of Shadows' that our captive boowray was serving, well that would explain all too much. The boowray wanted to corrupt your daughter not to undermine the Inquisition, but because she would be able to steal the artifact. Since that failed, he's decided to force her hand instead." Alexander pondered.

"I can see no obvious flaws in your theory. Still, how can we hope to track this 'Prince of Shadows' who somehow managed to steal both my daughter and the Eye of Vhaeraun from under our very noses? He must be a creature of dreadful power and stealth." Wyan worried.

"I think the best way to track him is not to track him. So long as he fears that the magical spell is still in effect, he'll need Lorelei, and so long as he has Lorelei with him, if we can track her, we're bound to find her captor, or at the very least rescue her." Alexander explained.

"So how do we track my daughter?" Wyan asked, pausing for a moment, clearly worried that there could be no easy answer to this question.

Alexander did have an answer, it just was not an easy one, at least not an easy one that he could tell to Wyan. In point of fact he'd spent almost this entire trip to the temple working on less dangerous explanations in the back of his head.

"I need to be left alone in her cell. I tell you this as a show of respect for the trust you have shown me Wyan, sometimes… I have visions.

Visions of wrongs that need to be righted, or evils that need to be combated. I can not fully control them, but they seem to always in some way reflect my surroundings. Before I came to here I was struck by a rough vision of a young man in Tepest who had lost the woman he loved while I was out in the market. Sure enough, Ivan D'Ogami proved to be a man who had been separated from his love and was a merchant.

Leave me alone in the cell that held your daughter to meditate… and if the gods are willing they will grant me a vision." Alexander promised Wyan.

Just as the blond haired man expected, Wyan was in a position so dire that he quickly agreed to Alexander's request no matter how strange it was.

XXX XXX XXX

It took less than five minutes alone in Lorelei's cell for Alexander Diamondclaw to receive his "vision" from "the gods" and emerge filled with deadly determination.

"Wyan, stay here and tend to your flock, all of Viktal needs you and I highly suspect that where we're going is no place for a man of your years." Alexander vowed.

Wyan did not attempt to disagree in the slightest, instead, he simply handed over a quick note he had scrawled in both Vassi and the makeshift written language that was Tepestani.

"Alexander Diamondclaw has my highest confidence and is on a mission of the utmost importance to me. Give him whatever aid you can. Wyan of Viktal." It was the final piece of aid her could possibly offer the man who he was trusting to save his daughter's life if it wasn't already too late.

XXX XXX XXX

The group was still making do with five horses, the same five that they'd originally ridden out of Viktal while trying to discover evidence of Bryonna's innocence.

They headed out of town going west, west towards the town of Briggdarrow, and beyond it the Shadow Rift. It was a massive gap in the Core where to any experienced eye there was simply nothing at all. It was from that ominous land which might be no land at all which the Children of Spring had sprung forth from in vast numbers after Markovia and G'Henna had vanished.

All logic suggested that if the Prince of Shadows was able to command the allegiance of an evil fey like a Boowray he must be one himself, and he must be bringing the inquisitor's daughter back to the Shadow Rift.

This time rather than James and Mirri sharing a mount they each had their own and Alexander went without. He would be worn down and tired for certain if he traveled a great distance on only two legs, but that was a problem for later. He had more important things on his mind than getting tired right now, first he had to lead the group far enough out of Viktal that they had some privacy.

"This is far enough, give me a moment, Mirri you and Florence need to look after the horses..." He warned them.

Then Alexander Diamondclaw removed his eye-patch.

His eye right eye gazed out at the world.

It was a strange orangish amber color, and as the light struck it, it seemed to glisten. Almost the very instant that it was laid bare to the world at large his body began to transform.

His clothing seemed to be drawn into his body as his hair grew out and changed to a shimmering silver. His back twisted and altered its shape causing him to fall on all fours. His hands and feet began to expand into thick paws, while his mouth lengthened into a muzzle. His ears perked up becoming pointed. A tail burst forth from his spine.

In short, he became a wolf.

There was only one part of him that did not change, his eyes. His left eye was still a normal human green eye, his right still the strange unnatural one he put so much effort into keeping hidden.

He raised his head up and began to sniff at the air, his nose now keener than that of any bloodhound sought a familiar scent.

He found next to no trace of it though.

"They didn't come this way." Alexander declared, his voice like his eyes utterly unchanged.

"You're certain? They could have used magic to hide their scent." Devi Skye pointed out.

"If the Prince of Shadows is paranoid enough to do that he would have started back in the cell. It wasn't just her cell I got in there though, I got his also… I think that I'm not picking up their scent because they didn't go this way. Now, lets stop arguing about it and go find out." Alexander insisted as Florence helped him redon his eye-patch.

Alexander Diamondclaw transformed back to a human, reached up and plucked a few of his hairs. They were silver now, the same color as his fur had been.

"Damn it Cal, I thought you said your dye would last." He muttered in irritation.

"Hey, it is long lasting and water proof, but even a guy as brilliant as me has trouble making 'magic' proof dye. You also need to cut your hair, it has gotten long again." The alchemist replied.

"Of course it has." Alexander reflected with a sigh.

He slid Wolf Claw free from its sheath, and with one (very careful) slash he cut away the excess hair he'd grown as a result of the transformation. That done he accepted a bottle of dye from Cal and began to spread it through his remaining hair.

"I only have so much of this stuff, and you're gonna need even more of it if you wolf out again..." Cal warned.

"What have the good people of Viktal done to deserve the horrifying sight of my true hair color?" Alexander asked as he rubbed in the chemical mixture.

"Oooh I know the answer to that one!" Mirri declared proudly, ever ready explore people's flaws in as much detail as possible.

"Rhetorical question. Anyway it's rubbed in well enough that it'll hold up for one quick trip through the village, lets go." Alexander declared as the group turned back towards Viktal.

XXX XXX XXX

Not so long later along an otherwise unoccupied section of the road leading north from Viktal the scene played itself out again.

An eye patch was removed, a body transformed, a nose scented the air.

This time however a silver tail wagged and bright white teeth were bared in preparation for the hunt.

"Got it. Got both of them. They're not going west like I suspected, they're going north." Alexander declared with the utmost certainty.

"But there's nothing to the north except a forest too dull to even have been given a menacing name, and beyond that..." Cal began.

"Keening?" James Firecat pointed out.

"Yeah, Keening, won't that be wonderful? We get to trade the uncertain death of a place that isn't really there for the certain death of Keening." The alchemist moaned.

Despite the fact that Keening was located right alongside the mighty and rich nation of Darkon (largest in the Core) there had been no recorded attempts at establishing so much as a single trading post in it.

There was a simple reason for that, there was nothing in Keening worth trading for, there was no one in Keening to trade with.

It was a barren lifeless land.

No one knew who or what had happened, or why it had happened, but nowhere in the world was was less suited to demi-human life than Keening.

"No more talk Beta, our prey already has a big enough head start." Alexander insisted before he took off.

The others snapped their reins and with a minor amount of fuss the horses were convinced to follow the wolf.

XXX XXX XXX

What the horses couldn't be convinced to do was go into Keening though.

Much like with the Three Sisters cottage the moment the border became visible they simply refused to take another step forward.

Once again Cal found it hard to blame them, the border of Keening was not an inviting sight. For all its faults Tepest was a living place full of wildlife and lush vegetation.

Keening on the other hand was still and cold. Not so much single blade of grass could be seen anywhere upon Keening's side of the border, and a terrible death like silence seemed to fill the air once the border was actually crossed.

Looming heavily over the entire realm was the snow-capped peak of Mount Lament; it was said that the mountain was home to a spirit whose cries of despair could be heard all throughout Keening.

Even faced with these obvious warnings, the group kept moving forward all the same. Alexander Diamondclaw would not be deterred, he continually pressed forward, silently daring any of his companions to even think about falling back or suggesting another course of action.

Like a wolf possessed he managed to keep up a force march for almost the entire rest of the day, nose constantly twitching as he tried to estimate exactly how far they were from Lorelei, and what sort of being had kidnapped her.

His scent was strange, it had some faint tinges of death about it, but not complete lack of more mundane biological odors that accompanied the undead. As the sun started to sink below the horizon Alexander finally called a halt, but he still didn't transform back to his human shape, as if he refused to loose his his keener sense of smell and the trail he was tracking with it for even one single second.

"Meat, raw." He growled, laying down on his sides, flanks heaving as he finally letting his tiredness show.

"Do you want me to comb your fur for ticks and burrs next?" Cal replied sarcastically.

"No, Florence is much better at it." Alexander answered at once.

Everyone was tired (save Mirri, the dead do not tire easily) and in a somewhat fouler mood than normal given that no matter how swiftly they had moved Lorelei's kidnaper always seemed to be just a little bit ahead of them.

They were gaining, of that Alexander was certain, and the mysterious man was starting to succumb to his own tiredness as well, but somehow he'd managed to keep ahead. The Prince of Shadows seemed to be heading for Mount Lament, and though Alexander had no idea what he planned to do there, he was certain it would bode ill for Lorelei.

Luckily even though the protective spell on the Eye of Vhaeraun was only effective inside of Tepest, the mysterious man was playing things safe and hadn't killed his captive the moment they crossed over into Keening.

With a few long dead sticks and branches stored in Devi's bag of holding the group managed to get a fire going and so Alexander's preference for raw meat did not become universal by necessity.

As the moon rose darkness somehow managed to make Keening seem even more desolate. In that ominous silence an amazing sight began to take shape.

It was a procession of demi-human shapes that was marching on much the same path as the group had taken out of Tepest and towards Mount Lament. No two figures looked exactly alike, some were little larger than a fist and floated on wings, while others were roughly human sized and trudged upon the ground.

Some "wore" shoes and ordinary clothing while others were barefoot and covered only by long robes. They weren't ghosts, at least not normal ghosts, ghosts were supposed to be a vaguely whitish transparent color, these ones were jet black, as if they were made of "living" shadow.

"Huh don't see that every day." Mirri reflected.

"Going to investigate?" His mood slightly mollified by a full belly Alexander asked rather than commanded.

"Can't exactly hurt." Mirri replied before standing up and walking over to trod alongside the progression of undead spirits.

"Can you understand me?" She called out to them in Tepestani.

Not a single one of the figures even turned to look at her.

"How about now?" She offered, switching over to her somewhat rusty Arak.

It wasn't a language she used a lot, but she'd managed to get a fairly decent grounding in it a century or so back when she'd spent several months being shadowed by a strange creature that had wanted nothing more than to follow her around, watch her kill people and discuss those deaths in detail.

The incorporeal undead seemed to recognize the language, though they neither slowed their pace or turned to face her.

"Go to the mountain." They chorused in one voice.

"Serve the Mistress." The same words continued to flow forth from many different voices.

"Go to the mountain. Server the mistress." They began to repeat the words again and again in monotone voices that would have perfectly matched the rhythm of their footsteps, if their ethereal feet had made sound.

"Go to the Mountain. Serve the mistress." They echoed again and again.

Mirri shook her head and began to walk back to the group. They might look something like ghosts, but she doubted those things were intelligent undead. It was either that, or whatever intelligence they had was so hopelessly under the control of their "Mistress" that it didn't make much of a difference.

So instead she simply went back to the campfire and decided that it was time for her to get a meal of her own.

Before she could suggest to Devi that it was time to retrieve her coffin from the bag of holding that was its resting place whenever it was not in use, a voice cried out shattering the deathly silence of the land.

A woman seemed to materialize from out of nowhere, Mirri hadn't even heard her heartbeat approaching them! Her fine features and slight stature resembled those of an elf maiden, but like the other trooping figures Mirri had scene she was composed of a strange mix of mist and shadow.

Her eyes burned with an ebon glow like a midnight sky completely devoid of stars.

"You are trespassing in the land of the dead." She declared ominously.

Mirri stood up to face the other dead woman.

"I am not, and these living beings are mine." She insisted.

There were a great many undead that harbored an almost pathological hatred for all living things, which was why Alexander trusted Mirri to act the groups' chief ambassador to them.

The dead woman looked straight through Mirri, then held out her hands imploringly.

"Show your devotion to the Mistress. Give us her child." The dead fey insisted.

"What child?" Mirri asked, feeling slightly confused.

"If you have not brought her the child you have not come to serve her. No enemy of the Mistress will exist here be they alive or dead! Your fate is sealed." The dead creature hissed.

Then she lashed out at Mirri with hands that had been twisted into something more like claws.

Mirri had been roughly expecting something like this though, so she wasn't caught flat footed and managed to retreat back a few steps avoiding the blow.

"I think that concludes negotiations Sir!" She called out to Alexander warning him and the others that the locals had proved rather irascible.

Alexander (still in his wolf shape) rolled over and got his paws on the ground but, but he wasn't able to aid Mirri directly as another dead woman's spirit suddenly materialized behind him, kicking out at him with taloned feet.

Mirri let her attention fall away from the group even as out of the corner of her eye she saw still more of the spirits shimmer into sight (magical invisibility and completely silent movement were a powerful combination) and instead focused on the foe directly before her.

"Based on your clothing, well what remains of it you were someone of noble birth when you were alive… so lets dance milady." Mirri offered and then rushed forward.

Those clawed hands came up to meet her, but the ghostly woman's incorporeal body served as a reflection of how she had been in life, she moved no swifter than when she'd been a creature of flesh and blood. Vampirism on the other hand took the original body and improved upon it in every way imaginable.

In death Mirri was stronger, smarter, more beautiful and of course, faster than she ever had be in life.

The claws again cut through only empty air, and a moment later Mirri slammed a fist into the spirit's face. The mystical powers of the stolen blood which pumped through Mirri's veins allowed her corporeal limbs to interact with the incorporeal "flesh" of ghosts and all other forms of incorporeal undead.

The dead woman soared through the air, not a graceful float but a wild propelled flight forced upon her by Mirri's blow.

It hadn't taken the vampiress long to realize that since they had no actual weight, ghosts were very easy to knock around in a fight, and the sight of one being tossed around her blows never ceased to amuse. When it managed to bleed off its momentum and recover it dashed at Mirri again.

Claws slashed out in fury, but the incorporeal woman was fighting with little more than bestial fury. Mirri by comparison had spent centuries honing her own skills at combat. She swiftly slid around a blow from the spectral claws and her own right hand closed about the specter's neck.

She hefted it even further up into the air for a moment before slamming it down against the ground beneath her. Then she smashed her booted feet into the dead Fey's face over and over again until its incorporeal body flew about into nothing more than mist and shadow.

Turning back to her companions she saw that they were fairing more or less equally well.

Alexander had overcome his initial injuries and was managing to rip his incorporeal foes apart with his teeth and claws.

Florence meanwhile summoned forth beams of bright sunlight that dispersed any spirit they struck. Cal had quickly begun loading with Phoenix with magical bullets which were as effective against these spirits as lead ones were on normal humans. Devi's flail spun this way and that it's magical capabilities allowing it to smite the spirits as surely as Cal's bullets could.

James for his part at transformed to his hybrid form, like Mirri and Alexander trusting in the innate magic of his body to insure his blows against the spirits connected.

It was impossible to say exactly how many spirits had attacked them (they didn't exactly leave bodies behind after all) but soon enough they had all been dispatched and silence returned.

"We're going to need to sleep in shifts in case more of them come back." Alexander insisted as soon as the fighting had died down.

Mirri was in no mood to spend several hours sitting around waiting for foes she couldn't see or hear approaching, but she also could clearly see how it was better than the alternative of them all being massacred in their sleep.

It seemed that her coffin and her meal would have to wait a little longer.

End Chapter.

AN: Bear with me folks, we've moved into the "traveling at the speed of plot" section of the story where no matter what the heroes do they can't be allowed to catch up with the villains until it's almost but not yet completely too late for them to save the day/hostage! It really, REALLY makes no sense given that the villains are never described as having horses, so there's no way their head start should be long enough, but the story isn't going to tell itself properly if they don't manage to reach Mount Lament first so, well there you have it, you get what you pay for.

Also this part of the Adventure Book itself is a bit poorly written in my opinion, since as written the Prince of Shadow is not given any reason for kidnapping Lorelei, the explanation Alex gives is based off of situations that have been proven true elsewhere in Ravenloft (read Scholar of Decay) so I felt applying them here makes this whole mess much clearer/more reasonable.

The Spell that Florence is busting out is the 7th level spell Sunbeam, her go to spell for direct combat against undead.

You may be wondering why she didn't use it against the Goblin Vampire a few chapters back, well the answer can be found in the words "direct combat" since this time the group's surroundings don't give her as much to work with. Well that and she's having to deal with multiple incorporeal foes and it is much harder for a druid to CC ghosts (not that those things are "ghosts" by the D&D monster manual but close enough comparison for the moment), that something you really tend to need a priest for.


	9. Chapter 9

Monster Party Book Five: Forgive me my mistakes, I'm only human.

Chapter Nine: I'm so far down, away from the sun...

The group kept watch in shifts throughout the night but no more of the ghostly apparitions tried to attack them. In the morning Cal was quick to hand out small leather sacks.

"I worked on these with Devi during my shift. If any of you think that that there might be some more of those invisible ghosts around, hold some of this in the palm of your hand and blow. Not sure if it will work on things that are simultaneously invisible and somewhat intangible, but it can hardly hurt to try." He advised them.

"Ooh, is it some secret mixture you made based on the Tincture of Midnight?" James Firecat eagerly inquired.

"It is chalk dust." Devi clarified before the lycanthrope got his hopes up any further.

"Hey it is not like you had any magical artifacts in your collection to see the invisible." Cal shot back.

With such good natured back and forth arguing the group headed out for Mount Lament.

It was hard to say if the mountain truly was at the very center of Keening, but it was undoubtedly the land's most prominent feature. Just as the legends which had given the mountain its name had suggested, it was possible to hear the wordless sobs and cries of someone or something drifting through the air once they drew close.

Mirri thought that she could detect vague touches of Arak from the cries, but more like individual sounds, particular letters being sounded out rather than actual words.

As they approach the foothills of the mountain two different passages were the most obvious source of entry.

"Still have his scent?" Florence asked Alexander who had indeed never bothered to return to his human form since leaving Tepest.

The silver wolf nodded and gestured with a paw toward the more eastern of the two passages.

"He went that way. Mirri I want you to and James to go check out the other one though. Given that our kidnapper didn't take it, it is more likely to have traps or undead servants guarding it, but I want every obvious escape rout blocked.

I still don't know who or what we're chasing, but one way or another he'll be brought to ground before the day is through." Alexander vowed.

Then he struck out for the eastern passage from which Lorelei's scent was coming with all possible haste, forcing Florence, Devi and Cal to jog to keep up.

He only began to slow down after reaching the mouth of the cave and discovering what lay within, darkness. There was not even a single trace of light within the cave.

Seeing the problem, Devi drew forth a lantern from her bag of holding along with some flint and steel. After it was lit the group proceeded more slowly, the lantern illuminating a hallway that was only about ten feet across but much, much longer.

About a hundred paces inside the tunnel the lanterns' light flashed off of something bright and shiny and all four stopped in trepidation. Only once they'd managed to observe the object without being blinded by reflecting light did it become clear that the object was nothing more than a simple silver broach attached to a scarlet shawl.

"Lorelei's right?" Cal pondered.

Alexander sniffed at the discarded garments and shifted his posture slightly bobbing his head lower to the ground in the best lupine approximation on a nod.

"We're getting close, very very close." He growled, his tongue playing along his teeth as he spoke.

XXX XXX XXX

The tunnel eventually split three ways, continuing on straight ahead, but also branching off to either side.

A quick look to the left was all it took to discern of the purpose of a smallish room crafted out of the mountain's rock. At one end sat a large iron brazier filled with long exhausted coals. Flanking the dark object were two racks of pokers, branding irons, thumbscrews, and other implements of torture. A rack and iron maiden both rusted into relative harmlessness stood opposite each other alongside the walls.

"All the comforts of home." Devi declared dispassionately.

"Only thing this man likes better than a hot poker is a hot rusty poker..." Cal muttered grimly.

"Based on what I saw of those creatures last night, they wouldn't even understand living beings well enough to torture us." Florence "comforted" the others.

A look in the room to the right showed another small room, this time its walls were adorned with a dozen pair of shackles, four of which were still locked around the wrist and ankles of long dead skeletons. The floor was covered with a jumble of bones as if many people had been imprisoned within this room, then simply left to die.

"Not that complete and utter indifference can't make a fine substitute for malice at times..." The dryad admitted.

"What am I even looking at? Those skeletons don't look fully human, there are things… off about them." Cal pondered as he examined the grisly remains of former captives.

"They may not have been. According to a few Tepestani tales I recall overhearing from out last few nights in the inn this mountain is the ultimate resting place of evil fey who persist on after death. Shadow Fey don't leave skeletons behind when they perish, but their changeling servants would." Alexander pointed out.

Whatever the truth that lay behind those bones it was as buried as the remains themselves should have been.

The group pressed on slowly and carefully and the tunnel began to open up more and more into another room. This area was rough and broken as if shattered by an earthquake. The floor was dusted with splinters of stone and the ceiling was so laced with fissures that it seemed ready to collapse any second.

Alexander's head swept back and forth around the room and then he suddenly focused his attention straight ahead at one seemingly empty corner of the room.

"Mettez une balle entre mon oreilles." Alexander "whispered" (it was really more of a soft growl) in Low Mordentish.

"Vous êtes un fils fou d'un chienne patron loup." Cal replied in the same language.

Then in one smooth motion he went down on one knee and fired.

Just as Alexander had commanded the magical bullet (Cal had been keeping Phoenix loaded with them in preparation for more ghostly foes) soared right between Alexander's ears passing only a few inches over his furry head. The moment Alex saw the bullet speed past him he pivoted, and leaped through the airs fangs bared.

As he flew through the air, the bullet continued to zoom straight forward, as bullets have a tendency to do. It seemed to paused for just a moment, and then suddenly there was an "explosion of darkness" as an eery shadowy figure suddenly bloomed into being, with a gaping hole in its ethereal body.

Before it the first ghostly spirit had even finished succumbing to its wound Alexander dragged his own invisible foe down to the ground from where it had been floating, and severed its neck with one good bite. This proved to destroy spirits just as effectively as it would have killed a living opponent.

Alexander spat out a seemingly unremarkable wad of spittle and then turned to face his companions.

"Say that about my mother again, and see what it gets you Beta..." Alexander declared, ears sticking straight up, and snout wrinkled.

There was an awkward silence.

"The woman was a saint." Cal quickly amended.

"She'd really want me to piss on your boots for saying that." Alexander countered jovially enough, though luckily he evidently saw no need to further mark the Alchemist as a member of his pack.

XXX XXX XXX

After carefully taking a winding staircase upwards the light of Devi's lantern soon illuminated a cul-de-sac, there was no way out of this section of the cave other than the one Alexander his companions now stood in.

At the far end of room was Lorelei of Viktal, sobbing in pain and horror.

As the light fell upon her it was possible to see that thin streaks of red dribbled from her hands, and somewhere along the journey she'd lost her sling. Florence bent down to help Alexander with his eye-patch, and then he transformed from wolf to man with shocking speed before racing to the young girl's side.

As he held the her close he saw that someone had stabbed a thin blade through each of her palms.

"He… he's going to do my feet next..." Lorelei whimpered, too terrified already to care about what she had just seen Alexander do.

"Who did this to you?" The silver haired man demanded.

"I'll let her go if you can guess my riddle…. 'I walk on four legs at the beginning of the day, two legs in the middle, and three legs at end.' What am I?" A hollow monotone voice suddenly called out, bouncing around the cave making it impossible to tell exactly where it came from.

It was male, but empty of bravado, and almost gentle in its tone.

"The day is a lifetime and the answer is a man, I've heard that one before." Alexander growled back.

"No, the day is a day. The answer is a baby that's had its legs cut off, its forced to crawl till it can find a stick to hobble with." The voice replied dryly.

"Don't let him have me again please..." Lorelei pleaded pathetically.

"What do you want with the girl?" Alexander demanded of the unseen voice.

"I want to see her die. I want to see how long it takes. I want to see what exactly claims her life. It is the payment the Prince promised me for such excellent service." The voice replied back, still unnaturally calm.

"Florence, light." Alexander commanded.

Florence Bastien reached into a pocket of her outfit and pulled out a long dead branch. She cast a quick spell causing it glow brightly and hurled the branch past Lorelei, further illuminating the other side of the room.

Neither the extra light nor tossing around some of Cal's chalk dust revealed any trace of the one who had been tormenting Lorelei. Alexander's single green eye looked this way and that searching for his foe, and then suddenly it widened in surprise and understanding.

"I'm the part of the bat that's not in the sky, I can swim in a river and yet remain dry. What am I?" Alexander asked as he slowly helped the still blubbering Lorelei to her feet.

"I don't care." The voice answered.

"We're leaving now." Alexander insisted to the inquisitor's daughter.

"Not quite yet..." The voice insisted.

Behind Alexander a figure started to emerge out of amorphous blackness.

In some ways it looked a great deal like Alexander, for it was tall while not excessively muscular and dressed in black. The figure had snow white hair though, and a guantness about his features, combined with long pointed ears.

He'd positioned himself perfectly so that Alexander's companions wouldn't be able to see him until it was too late, and stabbed a rapier forward, ready to skewer Alexander's heart with one clean stroke.

The silver haired man spun to side at the last moment softly casting Lorelei upon the floor to free both his arms as the rapier pierced through fabric rather than flesh and Wolf Claw slid from its sheath into his waiting hands.

"You should have, because 'a shadow' is the answer." Alexander Diamondclaw told the white haired figured as the rapier was retracted back in preparation for another attack.

While the two stared each other down Cal and Devi edged closer trying to help Lorelei crawl towards some measure of safety.

"Ah, how clever. What is your name? A death is always so empty if I don't have a name to go with it." The white haired 'man' asked in a polite soft tone.

"Alexander Diamondclaw, and you are?" The blond man answered.

"You can call me Onyx." Onyx replied, his voice still little more than a whisper.

"Turn back into shadow and flee, now. I care more about protecting this girl than I do killing you." Alexander suggested.

"That makes one of us." Florence Bastien and Onyx in unison, causing the white haired male to blink a few times in confusion at the dryad.

"Your stubborn empty bravado is pointless, the strongest of human forged blades will… AHHHHH! YOU SPAWN OF THE SORCERER-FIEND!" Onyx's veneer of hospitality evaporated like ice cubes in the middle of an inferno.

It really was amazing just how loudly he could "whisper" when he wanted to.

His posture had been relaxed and at ease, his rapier held loosely in one hand, ready to mock rather than fight. That had made it easy for Alexander to land a strike from Wolf Claw, slicing a deep red gash in Onyx's cheek.

"I'm sorry, did I break your concentration? You were saying something about my 'human forged blade' I believe? Offer is still open if you want to flee." Alexander 'apologized' to Onyx.

"I will not be bested by some lee-due child!" Onyx spat, his temper clearly starting to get the better of him.

"He is Shadow Fey, do not kill him Alex!" Florence Bastien called out.

The dryad spoke not in the tender tones of one who wishes avoid loss of life, but in the far more sinister snarl of those who have some great use for a captive but none for a corpse.

"Well, now I really can't afford to let you go. Show me your skill deadly fairy!" The silver haired man insisted.

Onyx charged Alexander, rapier at the ready, his face once again a frozen mask of concentration. Every one of his movements poised and graceful as if there was some part of him that was still made of shadow.

He thrust again, and Alexander barely managed to bring Wolf Claw up in time to deflect the strike.

The silver haired man rallied against his shadowy foe with movements as swift as quicksilver. His feet became a blur upon the ground as he swung Wolf Claw about wildly, eschewing any hope of landing a killing blow, instead seeking advantage in his weapon's longer reach and greater weight.

Onyx was forced to dart backwards here and there, careful to keep his distance. The strength of his arms would have been quickly eroded if he was forced to block strike after strike from Wolf Claw.

For his part, Alexander kept up his relentless assault and since his foe refused meet his strikes head on, he let the force of each slice feed freely into the next, keeping his blade spinning about his entire body.

"Your hair….? How… how many years have you lived for?" Onyx gasped in shock as he only barely avoided Alexander's latest attempt to pin him against one of the cave's walls.

"Enough to beat you." Alexander promised.

"Wild exuberance, raw strength, and flashy footwork is no match for true prowess." Onyx declared.

Then just after Wolf Claw sliced through the air a few inches in front of him, the Shadow Fey suddenly rushed forward.

Wolf Claw came twisting around ready for another go, but Onyx dropped to the floor and rolled just out of reach.

He came out of that roll at Alexander's feet, and with an expert thrust Onyx's blade buried itself deeply into Alexander's belly. Wolf Claw slid from its owners suddenly slack fingers and clattered against the floor.

"Got you!" Onyx rejoiced at having so perfectly executed his plan.

"Got you." Alexander Diamondclaw declared calmly as his hands closed around the appendage Onyx was using to manipulate his weapon.

Onyx's arms shifted as he tried to slide his blade side to side in order to inflict still greater harm upon Alexander. It didn't work.

Then he tried to pull it out so that he could strike with again. It didn't work.

"One last riddle. How does a wolf claim is prey?" Alexander asked.

Then he slammed his head into Onyx's with force that might have knocked the white haired shadow fey several steps back if he was so thoroughly caught in Alexander's grip.

Onyx's grasp on his own weapon suddenly loosened and Alexander shifted his grip, rather than pinning Onyx's hand against the blade's hilt he instead forced it loose, and twisted.

There was a sound of cracking bones.

Now needing only one hand to hold onto his foe's ruined limb, Alexander used the other to pull the rapier out of his stomach and tossed it aside.

"With endurance." He answered before driving an elbow into Onyx's stomach driving the air from his lungs.

Then he grabbed the shadow fey's other hand and broke it as well just make sure Onyx was completely disarmed.

Florence's hands wove an intricate pattern and she repeated the same sound over and over again, casting the same spell several times as she tossed around still more sticks from Devi's bag of holding, each one of which began to glow. The light in the room grew brighter and more ever present as Alexander slammed Onyx against one of the walls.

The white haired shadow fey's form seemed to distort for a moment, but it didn't stop Alex from laying into his stomach with another powerful punch.

"Its awfully hard to turn into a shadow when there aren't any, isn't it?" Florence Bastien taunted.

The twigs she'd enchanted had been carefully positioned so no section of the room was allowed even the tiniest portion of darkness, they overlapped one another to eradicate rather than cast shadows.

"This is… magnificent! I have never died myself, I will remember millenia to come!" Onyx declared with a look of transcendent bliss as he realized just what was about to happen to him.

"No, the last thing you ever 'remember' will be my face." Florence Bastien declared.

"You know nothing of the glories of death!" Onyx spat contemptuously of the druid.

"If you wish to study to death, I will complete your tutelage." She declared, in the Sylvan tongue, a language she had never taught to any other member of the group.

She dropped her staff and starting to weave still more complex patterns through the air this time needing both hands.

Then she spoke a few soft words in Tepestani.

"Every twilight inevitably gives way to the dawn." She declared with a smirk.

Sections of the Mount Lament abruptly transformed from solid rock into liquid mud and poured into the room. More and more more mud fell along with a few rocks that were no longer supported thanks to how Florence was hollowing out the mountain.

She'd carefully positioned her spell though so that neither the mud or rocks fell near Alexander or Onyx.

"What are you talking about… no….. what are you doing…. NO!" The injured Onyx pleaded as he suddenly realized exactly what she had in mind.

The spell's effects worked their way upwards until they punched through the mountain itself into open air, crafting a ten foot wide by ten foot long opening in the mountain. The sunlight that entered in through this shaft was weak and somewhat overcast, but it would serve Florence's purposes.

"Now you fear? Now you a horrified? You who have built an entire existence around death suddenly recoil? Do you no longer find it so wonderful now that you have become the chaff before his scythe? Your life and the lives of so many more could have been so much better if only you considered it before.

I suppose you never had a choice though, children who torture animals for pleasure must be punished, and this is the only punishment you would understand." Florence cruelly mocked Onyx.

"Alex, enlighten my cousin in shade." The dryad commanded.

With a look of great satisfaction Alexander easily hefted Onyx into the beam of sunlight.

It might have been on the hazy side, but that only seemed to slow the inevitable process, not alter its effects. Wisps of smoke began to arise from Onyx's skin, hair, and clothing, before they began to ignite.

He writhed in pain as the sunlight caused his entire body to cook and combust. Having endured the flames of Bryonna's pyre Alexander did not allow the heat given off by Onyx's ignition to shake him, and maintained his grip, keeping his captive firmly beneath the beam of sunlight.

Onyx's skin was seared away revealing the bones beneath and he cried out in a voice so pitiful it might make stones weep. Then even those bones themselves were to be bleached whiter still and, and broken by the beam of sunlight. His entire body, clothing and all was burnt away into a shadowy reflection of itself, and then that shadow was dispersed by the sunlight leaving nothing behind, not even ashes.

Florence bent down to pick up her staff again her lips still twitched upward in delight.

"It is well that dispensing Gaia's justice is so horrible, or I should grow much too fond of it." She admitted.

End Chapter

AN: First of all, Alex's right eye among other things (many other things) effectively grants him (bad depth perception related) True Seeing with maybe a few minor crunch tweaks like not seeing polymorphed creatures as what they were before they changed shape. To explain it as perfectly as I can, Alex's right eye will always see the perfect "Physical Truth" of a situation (that which can be obtained through scientific study) or to use examples, he doesn't see James as a human when he's in cat or hybrid form, he doesn't see Mirri as a vampire when she's in one of her various transformations.

In case you didn't get the joke a few lines back I use "grants" not as in the sense of "casts the spell on him" but in the sense of "this eye (and only this eye) perceives the world with this quality." That is one of many reasons he tends to likes his eye-patches, having to mentally reconcile the differences between what his eye see tends to give him headaches.

This ability is why he's able to see the ghosts in that chamber and orders Cal to shoot one of them.

Now you may be wondering why he didn't see them in the last chapter.

Very simple reason, it is an eye of true seeing, its not x-ray vision, much like how it doesn't work when he wears the eye-patch, it doesn't work when he has his eyes closed because he's tired, or when he has his eyes focused on Florence/the ground while she checks his fur for ticks and burs.

I felt that it would have been needlessly pedantic to describe exactly what Alex's eyes were doing while he was trying to relax last chapter, and I hope you agree me that would have felt awkward/pointless...

Second of all, the "Sith" (no relation to Star Wars) breed of Shadow Fey are completely immune to steel weapons. It does not matter if they are +1, +2, +3, +4, +5 or even a theoretical +6, they have a blanket immunity to steel weapons. That is why Onyx takes Alex so lightly at the start of the fight.

Wolf Claw is thus as you might obviously guess, not made of steel. There is a really simple, really obvious answer to what it is actually made of, but if you haven't realized it yet, well there will be more hints in the future.

Also, remember what Florence said about certain "Fey" back in Chapter Three?

Guess what, she was doing what neutral good people do with those they don't consider to be villains, she was telling the truth.

That said, before there's any talk over Dark Powers checks, what Florence did was in point of fact the proper/only way to actually get rid of Shadow Fey for good. At least for a given value of "for good" (always something to keep in mind in Ravenloft) since sometimes when burnt by they sun they come back as incorporeal undead (we'll talk about that a lot soon enough trust me) but being burned by the sun completely extinguishes their spark of life, anything else (except death by level drain, which is roughly equivalent to having your soul ripped out of your body) and they'll just pull themselves back together again in a few decades.

So, don't blame Florence for wanting to burn Shadow Fey any more than you would blame your average PC for wanting to track a vampire back to its coffin after they've been taken to zero hit points and reduced to their gaseous form.

Originally as written Florence finished of Onyx by busting out Sun Beam (which we first saw last chapter) which is described in the Ravenloft campaign as being the equivalent of actual sunlight for dealing with creatures that have a weakness to sunlight such as vampires. The Van Richten Guide to Shadow Fey however directly says that the magical equivalent to sunlight doesn't work.

So instead we got this, which actually works a little bit better. If nothing else, Florence already showed off her Rock to Mud spell back when she fought that Goblin Beast a few chapter ago!

So yes, Florence wants to put evil Shadow Fey down hard, primarily because that's honestly the only way you can actually put them down. There's no such thing as a "good clean death" for a Shadow Fey, they're either temporarily out of the picture and probably won't learn anything from the experience (in a moral sense) or they get a horrible agonizing death by burning in sunlight/necromancy.

What can I say, when you stop and think about it, it is almost like whoever designed the Shadow Fey was some sort of soulless monster who….. oh…. Right….


	10. Chapter 10

Monster Party Book Five: Forgive me my mistakes, I'm only human.

Final Chapter: I'm a bump you'll never get over

James and Mirri pressed on into their own passage. Soon they came face to nothing with the exact same obstacle that Alexander's group had been forced to deal with.

"Wow, this is dark even for me." James Firecat reflected gazing into the, well he wasn't quite sure because of said previously mentioned darkness.

"Ehh I've had worse." Mirri shrugged, for a vampire it was hard to imagine such a thing as "too dark".

Not wanting to rely on Mirri acting as his seeing eye vampire as they pressed further in the gloom James began to search through the many pockets of his red jacket. Eventually he produced a small round stone that he held in the palm of his hand.

"Luna shine on your child." He intoned solemnly and the rock began to emit a weak silvery light.

Even when he closed his hand into a fist to avoid dropping the stone enough of the light managed to filter through his fingers to let his lycanthropic eyes function properly.

That taken care of, the two pressed deeper into the tunnel, and then they suddenly both caught a faint green glimmer. It soon became clear that the passage ahead was covered by a lattice of thick strands, each glowing with a faint emerald light.

The more James looked at it, the more it looked like a gigantic net, or a spider's web.

"It's a trap." He announced as much to reassure himself as to let Mirri know.

"Well what do you want to do about it? I could turn to mist waft through then look for ways to take it down from the other side?" She offered.

James shook his head and slowly approached the huge web, pulling out a few small metal tools from his pockets.

"No, I've got this. A spider's web is just a gigantic trap, and no one is better with traps then I am..." The young werecat insisted.

Then he slowly and carefully began to run his tools along various strands of the material, careful to never actually touch it himself. After the first such pokes and prods he pulled his first tool of choice back and looked on in surprise as a few flakes of frost materialized upon. it.

"I think this one has some kind of magical cold enchantment on it." He advised Mirri.

While James was studying the web for its weaknesses and strengths, Mirri was doing a few calculations of her own.

"I'm not hearing any nearby heartbeats, I think this thing might be just a stylized decoration." She pointed out.

Then she reached out, grabbed two strands of the webbing and tore them both in half with ease. Flakes of frost began to form about her gloves, but cold, even magical cold, had to try quite hard to bother a vampire and this spell seemed to have been designed with living foes in mind.

She began to rip more and more of the webbing apart, but as she did so an ominous scuttling sound began to creep into their ears.

A vaguely spider like shape whose eight legs all trailed off into dark mist slid out of the ceiling and began to make its way towards the pair, its eight eyes glowing malevolently.

"Or the web could be guarded by an undead spider, guess that's a possibility also..." Mirri admitted awkwardly.

"Don't worry Mirri I'll handle it!" James insisted proudly sliding between her and the beast.

"Are you sure you can do this Kitten? I know how you are about spiders." Mirri pointed out.

"I was sort of expecting this one honestly. Besides, it's not nearly as big as that red one was!" James insisted as the spider bunched its legs in preparation for attack.

Then it leaped from its webbing at him and James brought up his hands, dropping the glowing stone to the floor in the process.

He wrapped his gloved hands tightly about two of the beast's legs, but it's head still lunged in toward his throat. James awkwardly leaned to the side and for the moment managed to avoid its venomous jaws.

Before it could launch another attack, he twisted himself around, and used the weight of the spider to his advantaged as he tossed the beast right back where it had come from, causing it to slam into a section of its own webbing.

A section of its own webbing that had a few of James small metal tools hanging form it.

A section of its own webbing that began to bend and flex as the spider twisted about wildly in it.

"It is a common misconception that spiders are immune to their webbing, like they've all somehow managed to master that Freedom of Movement spell Florence loves so much.

The reality of the situation is much simpler..." James declared in a calm dry voice as he pulled out a shinning knife from the inner folds of his jacket and began to approach the beast.

"They simply weave the strands out of two differences substances, both strong, but only one adhesive, then they make sure not to touch the sticky strands. You see, if they do touch those strands, they get stuck just like anything else." The lycanthrope pointed out, with a very obvious example before him.

In one smooth motion he sliced open the spider's neck to a degree that even Mirri found a little extravagant and ended it's struggles.

"A spider's web is a trap. Like any trap it can be turned against the one who made it." The red haired werecat declared confidently as he surveyed his fallen eight legged foe.

"That's great but I'm gonna go make sure it doesn't have any more friends hanging around..." Mirri replied before she transformed herself into a cloud of billowing white mist.

Said mist swiftly flowed out of the room through a few small cracks in the ceiling. Said cracks were made much bigger a short time when later when Mirri smashed her way through them (once again in human form) and crawled out.

Held in her right hand was a silver wand with a glowing green gem set in it.

"There was some nice coin up there also, but this looked even more important. My Arak is still a little rusty but I believe inscriptions on this wand says 'so our priestess may see clearly' as far as I can tell." She explained waving it around proudly.

While she'd been searching, James had gone back to delicately taking apart the web, but he still smiled wildly at her words.

"So you think so long as you have that thing you'll be able to see any more of those invisible ghost thingies trying to sneak up on us?" He suggested.

"Well Alexander isn't here to look after you so somebody had better do it." Mirri chuckled to herself as she pried the gem loose from the wand.

XXX XXX XXX

"What are you doing here?" A female voice cried out.

"I come bearing gifts..." A calm male voice replied.

Mirri abruptly held up a hand, as she and James came to a stop. Around a corner in the cavern she could hear the sound of two people talking, but she could only hear one heartbeat.

"Loht you have brought back my child!" The female voice screeched in transcendent joy.

"You see, I always keep my word. Now, if you will please be so kind as to deliver the sword to me, I will trouble you no more..." The male voice insisted.

With a warning hand motion to James letting him know to stay back she decided to crash this particular party.

"Wait, wait, wait, what is going on here exactly?" Mirri demanded as she stepped around the corner.

A vast chamber lay before her, stretching out nearly a hundred and fifty feet across and rising to a similar height. At its center were a series of stone pillars which rose from floor to ceiling.

Mirri immediately felt vindicated by her choice to do this alone, because this entire room seemed to have been near completely given over to the care of spiders. Every crevice of every surface had been used to anchor the web of some hungry arachnid. Most of them were small, designed for only catching flies or other insects, but a few were much larger, suggesting they had been made by more ambitious arachnids.

At the far end of the room was a massive golden altar shaped like an overturned black widow. A black-bladed longsword was half sunk into the body of this gleaming monstrosity, as it had been used to slay the gigantic spider.

Gathered around the alter were two people, one was a tall thin pale demi-human with pointed ears dressed in the black finery of a gentleman complete with riding cape.

The other figure floated in the air above the golden spider, a spectral creature of mist and vapor. Her skin was coal black and glittered like the midnight sky. Long white hair floated freely in the air around her head forming an almost angelic nimbus.

Black tears trickled down her slender cheeks, and her eyes seemed to dart wildly around the room, looking at everything and nothing.

"You! Have come to try and steal my child?" Demanded "Tristessa" as at least for the moment she focused her attention on Mirri.

"Destroy her great lady, she is surely plotting against you!" The silver haired and dark skinned male demanded.

Mirri raised her hands deferentially, trying to buy herself some time to understand what was going on.

"Lady Tristessa, I mean no trespass. Besides, is Keening not the land of the dead? Feel my hands, seek the existence of my heartbeat. I am not among the living, unlike your guest." She pointed out, figuring this would at least start to turn her spectral host's attention around.

"Loht" was not going to just sit back and let Tristessa's ire be focused on him sadly.

"I am alive, but I have good reason to come to Keening. I have brought you back the child you have sought for so long, no doubt this fiend wishes to steal her from you!" He declared dramatically.

Tristessa's head swung back and fixed Mirri with a baleful glare.

"I have come too far, struggled too hard, we will not be separated again!" She screeched, and as she did so spiders began to pour out of various nearby holes, normal sized ones at first, then... not so much.

Mirri waved her hands about wildly as she took a step back.

"Don't listen to a word he says I don't want your..." She paused for a moment he undid the cloth wrapping and for the first time Mirri was able to see exactly what Loht was offering to Tristessa.

"Kitten..." She gasped out in shock.

"What?" Tristessa demanded her fury rising still higher.

Mirri knew it had been the wrong thing to say, but she couldn't help herself... there clutched tightly in Loht's hands she saw James Firecat in his feline form.

She blinked a few times and cast a look backwards towards the corner that she'd walked around just a few moments ago… James was still back there, and why was she only hearing this third heartbeat now that she could see him? Especially given that she could also hear the louder (though no less rapid) sound of a James' heart beating in his human form back where she'd left him?

None of this made any sense, unless... oh...

Instantly Mirri raised a hand to her face and half slapped it, cursing herself mentally.

/Stupid, stupid stupid dullfang!\ She reflected while battering her own face as if she sought to actually beat the points of her incisors dull.

/How can that be your deepest desire? Look at it again and see it clearly! It should be vial of Strahd Von Zarovich's kin-nectar! If you had that then you'd be able to force him to do whatever you wanted including open his neck to still more feedings!

You'd make a puppet out of darklord, and rule with all the powers of one at your command without any of the downsides! It'd be the perfect way to spend your unlife! Queen, no make that Empress Miriam of Barovia, yes that does sound lovey doesn't it?

Now then look at it again and see your deepest darkest desire correctly this time...\ It was a good thing that undeath had sped up Mirri's mental facilities for all these thoughts raced through her mind in the blink of an eye.

Then she looked upon Loht's offering again... and still saw a red furred housecat.

/Screw it, subconscious you and I are going to have a long talk after this! Where the f**k do you get off telling me something different than I tell myself? You're no better than that regular conscience I got rid of, this is my body and I am in complete control of it!

No hormones to sway my thoughts, no morality to limit my actions, and it there should be no subconscious to muddle my desires either!\ Mirri insisted

A moment later "James" mewed, a sound so perfect and innocent that Mirri wasn't sure if she should vomit in disgust or try to cuddle him, neither option seemed especially wise at the moment.

Tristessa must have heard something similar since she floated closer, grabbed up "James" from Loht's unresisting hands and pressed the werecat to her breasts at which point he began to suckle.

Now this was just getting silly, Mirri might still have a magical circulatory system for transporting blood through her body, but she really REALLY doubted an incorporeal creature like Tristessa did, let alone that she could still produce milk!

More to the point, for Tristessa to be doing what she was doing, she must be seeing the "child" that those ghosts had talked about last night...

"Tristessa, forgive my slowness of thought and action, for I was overawed by the righteousness of your maternal quest." Mirri quickly jumped back into the conversation figuring that like any darklord flattery could buy her at least temporary safety.

"Please let me give you a my own token offering, and unlike your other guest I give it freely out of respect due to one of your stature." Mirri reached into a pocket and squeeze the green gem tightly.

As she held it tightly the sound of James' stereo heartbeats vanished, and she could clearly see that Tristessa was holding nothing more than a small white orb.

Good, that stupid Eye of Vhaeraun might be powerful enough to affect even undead, but that didn't make it unbeatable. She tossed the gem to Tristessa, and thankfully the Eye didn't go back to looking like James.

Tristessa adjusted her grip on the bundle and caught the gem, clearly having little concern for material wealth. Then she turned her gaze back to her true treasure, and her brow suddenly furrowed deeply.

"Loht, what... what is this?" She demanded angrily.

The pale skinned man began to back away from her suddenly.

"Clearly that gem is cursed to warp your sight and make you unable to recognize what is right in front of your own eyes..." He babbled well aware that the tide now turned decisively in Mirri's favor.

"Do you have any skill with magic Lady Tristessa? Perhaps you could apply it by dispelling all nearby enchantments? Then you could see what is true and what is false." Mirri suggested, her smirk now becoming broad enough that it was possible to see her fangs.

Loht knew what was coming and started running. The green gem and the white orb both shimmered for a moment and then Tristessa's confusion gave way to pure fury.

"TRAITTTTOOOOOORRR!" She roared.

Then after sucking in one more breath she let loose with a sound that Mirri could not truly describe.

It was as if all the misery of all the people who lived, who had lived, and who might yet live had been joined together into one single anguished wail.

The spiders were effected first, they toppled like broken toys, their size offering them no defense against power of Tristessa's scream. The retreating form of Loht got it next, running as fast as he could he still could not outrun pure sound.

It washed over him, and he dropped to his knees. Clumps of white hair fell from his head like patches of fur from a mangy cat. He spat out a mouthful of blood, and Mirri's keen eyesight picked out shards of white amid the red, his teeth.

For all his suffering Loht could not be stopped however, as he collapsed at the base of the sword he had been running towards, and laid a hand upon its hilt even as he fell. A moment later, both he and the blade vanished into a pool of insubstantial shadows.

Then the wave of sound finally got around to hitting Mirri. She winced as his sensitive hearing was assaulted by the sound, but it passed quickly enough, and that was the only effect it had on her.

That just left her and Tristessa alone together, and Mirri was sorely tempted to transform into her own non-corporeal form.

That would be the easy way out though, she could press her advantage if she was brave, and what did she have to fear from this spirit?

Aside from how Tristessa commanded a veritable army of spiders and undead which no doubt could tear Mirri limb form limb and probably had a whole host of weird darklord powers as well.

"That could have gone, better..." Mirri admitted, not sure what else could be said about the matter.

"He survived! How dare he survive my cry! My servants shall hound him to the ends Keening! Let the winds blow! Let none escape my domain, let that devil who sought to fool me be captured! He shall hear my song in full, he shall know my pain!" Tristessa bellowed, clearly paying no attention at all to the vampire in her presence.

Mirri felt that sticking fingers in her mouth and whistling to attract a darklord's attention when they were plotting revenge was a very bad idea. So instead she knelt upon the ground in the loudest and most dramatic manner she could.

"Lady Tristessa, your servants are mighty and numerous but, do they fear the sunlight?" That carefully chosen statement managed to get Tristessa's attention without her anger.

"Are you saying you don't?" Okay, at least not all of her anger.

"I lady Tristessa am a rare specimen. Besides, as I am sure you are aware, Loht was not the only mortal to enter your land recently. While he came to deceive and swindle you, I on the other hand brought my mortal servants with me to lift the veil he sought to place over your eyes. Not only that, but me and my companions can track down that bastard at any hour of the day or night.

Even if he should he somehow escape Keening, we can follow beyond its borders. Wherever the mists take him, we can follow." Mirri promised.

Tristessa eyed her carefully, having already been taken in once today she was clearly in no mood to be betrayed yet again.

"Why would you offer your services to me, and what would you demand for them bloodsucker?" The ghostly spirit said in an almost conversational tone of voice.

"There is a special and most unpleasant place in the afterlife for women who don't help other women. As for what payment..." She paused and let anticipation build before answering.

"Do not call the winds, do not seal your borders. That is all I ask." Mirri pleaded.

"Take your living and depart my realm. Do not return again unless you bring with you either my child or the one upon whom I desire vengeance. Keening is no place for the living, but I can make even other undead unwelcome here should I wish it." Tristessa proclaimed.

Figuring that was about the best response she could hope for under the circumstances Mirri turned to go.

"Wait... take this... this cursed bauble with you, I have no desire for fakes or tricks, one day I will be reunited with MY child, not some enchanted trinket!" The darklord insisted, tossing Mirri the Eye of Vhaeraun.

The vampire caught the magical artifact and breathing a heavy sigh that for one of the few times in her unlife she felt like she actually needed.

Somehow she'd done it, she'd managed to get into a conversation with a darklord without dying, and even gotten the Eye of Vhaeraun back, and it wasn't like anyone was paying them to keep some weird mystical sword out of the hands of a…. whatever exactly Loht was…

"Well James I think it's safe to say that our work here is pretty much..." Mirri began as she walked around the corner, but never quite got a chance to finish.

The moment she came face to face with James, his entire posture (and a few parts of his physical body) began to change.

His eyes bulged out, his legs bent, and then with a speed that took even Mirri by surprise he pounced.

The vampire was knocked onto her back and the Eye of Vhaeraun fell from her stunned hands bouncing across the floor.

James was off of Mirri as quickly as he'd landed on her and went after the Eye with the sort of furor he normally reserved for chasing rodents.

He snatched the thing up in both hands and held it up above him letting loose with the closest thing to a cackle Mirri could ever possibly imagine James producing.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES! I've got it! I've got it! I've got it! I've finally got it!" He boasted in a voice that Mirri desperately hoped Tristessa wouldn't especially care to investigate/

Then he suddenly turned to face Mirri the Eye clutched tightly in his left hand.

"Can't you see Mirri? Heh! See! I wasn't even intending to make that joke! Its the legendary Mirror of Elizabeth! The Mirror that shows a vampire's reflection!" He declared joyously while twisting his hand as if holding out a mirror for her to look into.

Mirri shot him a sidelong glance as she decided it would be best to put this particular flight of fancy down before it got out of hand.

"No... No James I can't see my reflection in it." A rain soaked orphan struggling to keep himself upright on two crutches in the mud with a whooping cough and badly patched ill-fitting garments could not have looked more pathetic and defeated than James Firecat looked at that moment.

"But... but, it says it right here in ancient glowing runes along the handle! Not just that, but when I hold like so I can see your reflection in it..." He protested pathetically.

Mirri slowly reached out with one hand to caress' James hair and scratch his feline ears.

"It's okay James. It's probably some half magical mock up that shows a vampire's reflection, but only to those who still have one of their own. Don't worry I'm sure you'll be able to find the real thing sooner or later..." Mirri promised him.

"But I wanted you to see… wanted to give you a chance to see how pretty you are..." He whimpered sorrowfully before his entire posture sagged and he let the Eye of Vhaeraun drop from his limp hand to roll softly across the floor.

"It is the thought that counts." Mirri reassured him, finding those words a great deal easier (and more truthful) to say at the moment than she normally would.

"Yeah, I'll find it for you some day..." He promised her managing to summon up one of his normal carefree smiles after a moment's hesitation.

End Chapter

AN: I am so very proud of the chapter title for this one, because it works not one way, not two ways, but three ways!

James is the bump (sex) that Mirri will never get over.

Loht is the bump (extra legal killing/hit) that Tristessa will never get over even if she doesn't remember it.

Tristessa's child is the bump (as in a baby belly/maternal bulge) that her mother will never get over.

As an undead Mirri has sixty feet of darkvision, but as a lycanthrope James only has low light vision so he needs a little help from his glowing rock to see what is going on around him.

Also according to this adventure book Tristessa can use "Dispel Magic" three times a day so no deus ex machina there in having her use it to realize what was going on.

Finally in 3rd edition Ravenloft there are actually relatively minor artifact known as a "Mirror of Reflecting" that can show a vampire's reflection, though it also mentions such things show an illusionary double rather than a true reflection, but I'm not sure exactly how that differs /it doesn't go into much detail. So for the sake of the story we'll just assume that the "Mirror of Elizabeth" is a one of a kind relic that will show a vampire's true reflection and without risking a vampire having a negative reaction to it, though Mirri is old enough to be beyond such things.


	11. Chapter 11

Monster Party Book Five: Forgive me my mistakes, I'm only human.

Epilogue: There's nothing sinister at all gnawing at my soul, but these confessions that I give help me feel in control.

"Wolf..." Whimpered Lorelei.

"That is right. Now hold onto the wolf's mane so that he can carry you back to your father." The currently lupine Alexander Diamondclaw insisted.

"My arm..." She pointed out, awkwardly flexing the limb in question, that was still bound by a cast if not a sling.

In response Florence gently took the young girl's arm in her hands, and wove a vine between her limb and Alexander's neck. A moment later the vine seemed to come to life and twisted itself into a firm knot binding her wounded limb securely in place.

In another situation it would be easy to imagine Lorelei being horribly frightened or angered by the sight of a talking wolf or a living plant. After what she had just been through however, she accepted whatever was put before her with a dream like detachment. Clearly, her time with Onyx had affected her mind even more severely than it had her body.

"You're really going to take me back to my father?" She whimpered to the wolf.

"Why should I lie to you?" Alexander asked back comfortingly before running his tongue along her cheek in his best approximation of canine loyalty.

XXX XXX XXX

"Did you really expect these to just be here waiting for you when you got back?" Rima the Vistana asked, as she held the reigns to a quintet of horses.

She had been waiting for the group at the border between Tepest and Keening, and evidently keeping watch of the mounts they'd left behind.

Much like Lorelei (though doubtlessly for very different reasons) she did not seem the least bit put off at the idea of holding a conversation with a wolf.

"It would have been nice, but not especially essential." Alexander answered.

"When in doubt rush off to save the day, worry about the fallout later, if at all. I wish I could remember being so young..." The elderly Vistana reflected.

"Can we have our horses back? If you want you can ride with us, maybe you can Florence can have a 'who has more sage wisdom off' along the way?" Cal offered.

XXX XXX XXX

Wyan of Viktal most renown inquisitor in Tepest found himself in a strange situation.

"Thank you once again for allowing us to have this discussion in a place where we can't be overheard. First you should know that I'm going to spend the rest of today resting, then I'm going to go after the Fey who kidnapped your daughter, he managed to get away, but not unharmed." Alexander Diamondclaw tried to reassure him.

Despite his companion's best efforts, the inquisitor was still somewhat taken aback that Alexander had insisted they talk in one of the cells normally used for holding prisoners. Still, there was much he was willing to grant to the man who had rescued his daughter from certain death.

He was even willing to let the man talk to him before he had a proper conversation with his rescued daughter!

"That's a small comfort, but I fail to see what you could possibly have to say that could require this much secrecy?" Wyan wondered, his mustache bristling with confusion.

"Please give me a second inquisitor, I'd like to consult myself." Alexander 'explained'.

"Consult yourself?" Wyan asked, now quite befuddled.

"Yes, I guess it is probably about time anyway.." The blond haired man reflected.

"Time for what?" Wyan did not think Alexander was babbling mindlessly, but he could not understand what sort of a point he was trying to make.

"I think it is time for you to meet him now, Inquisitor." Alexander declared gravely.

Then in one smooth quick motion Alexander Diamondclaw casually pealed off his eye-patch, giving Wyan a perfect view of his right eye.

For Wyan of Viktal it was like the Shadow Rift itself opening up beneath his feet, sending him plunging down into a dark abyss.

"Gods save you Goodman Wyan, I'm Alexander Diamondclaw." It was the traditional Tepestani greeting, yet now it truly did sound as if divine intervention was the only thing that might possibly allow Wyan to leave the cell alive.

"Fey..." Wyan whimpered out the single word and then went silent.

He gazed into Alexander's right eye for a few moments, and then he slowly and calmly hung his head, closed his eyes, and spread his arms out palms open in acceptance of the inevitable.

"So be it, my life for my daughter's... though I fear for Viktal, what father worthy of the name would not make the trade? Do with me as you will." He offered himself up for slaughter.

"Don't start jumping to conclusions now Inquisitor, I'm duinelltoir." Alexander shamelessly grabbed already existing words in Tepestani and jammed them together in the Falkovnian manner.

Wyan was unsure of what to say or do, he simply furrowed his brow in utter confusion.

"Come now Wyan, I'm sure you've passed down at least one verdict of fealltoir in the past haven't you?

Declaring that the accused is not fey, but has still willingly consorted with them?

I am duinelltoir, a fey who willing consorts with humans with the intent of aiding them.

You live such brief lives, frequently only half a century or so…. Yet you burn so brightly, when you aren't burning each other." As Alexander spoke Wyan drew in a deep breath.

"Why are you telling me this?" He demanded.

"Why do you think I am? Because it is the right thing to do." Alexander answered.

"You could have told me when we first met. That's typically regarded as the 'right thing to do' rather than lying to my face again and again." Wyan couldn't help but point out.

"Telling the truth is the right thing to do… but it's not the hardly the 'rightest' thing that a person can do. It has to take a back seat to more important matters, like stopping innocent women from being sentenced to death, or rescuing a man's daughter from Fey far less kind hearted than I am." He pointed out.

"Then we're still going around in circles about why you've decided to finally tell me this..." The white haired man insisted.

"Consider it a show of good faith. You said that you wanted to meet a Fey, you wanted to know why we hate you. Well, let me enlighten you. Most of us don't, even the ones who aren't like me don't hate you. They couldn't even be bothered to hate you, any more than you hate the ants you step on.

We existence a different time scale than you do, and in that difference are sown the seeds of a thousand tragedies..." In the wake of Alexander's words a profound silence filled the cell.

"Say on..." Wyan insisted eventually.

Alexander nodded and did exactly that.

"Allow me to stoke the fires of your heart Inquisitor. Don't think that just because we live longer that our lives have any greater meaning than yours do. While it may be brief, human life is not meaningless.

You are a better human than I am a Fey.

Your own daughter was wracked fits so severe her bones were shattered, no one who could otherwise seem sane would fake such a grievous malady. When you imprisoned the one who was suspected of causing the fits, they stopped.

That was not hearsay, that was not gossip, that was not a confession forced through torture, that was evidence. It was evidence, carefully constructed by a being with powers greater than your own, but you did all you could with the resources at hand.

I saw in your case notes how you planned to turn all of Bryonna's belongings over to Leobe, how you've done your utmost to make sure that the material wealth of those you judge remained within their families rather than claiming them for yourself.

Do not doubt your cause, do not doubt that there are Fey who exist and have powerful magic with which they seek to snuff out your lives, or would willingly do so without even noticing. Do not doubt that there are still other beasts who seek to end your lives either out of hunger or simple spiteful malice.

There are monsters in the woods, to deny that is to deny that there are stars in the sky. If you are not to be reduced to cowering behind closed doors each night as they do in Barovia or Kartakass, someone must stand against them.

Someone must dare to become a beacon of resistance, or else all of human civilization will be placed upon the pyre. The truth of the matter lays in the burning, does it not?

What you must do Inquisitor, is never confuse the flame of defiance for the chill of fear. Evidence, real evidence must be gathered, trails, fair trials must be held, judgment, unbiased judgment must be rendered, and the people of Tepest must be defended... defended from the Fey, from themselves, and from your own inquisitors.

Only a man with truly titanic strength of spirit can bear the burden you have taken upon yourself, lesser men would be crushed under the weight of your duties. Inquisitor Wyan, does your spirit burn to defend the people of this nation, or should your body burn for the crimes you will one day commit against them?" Alexander demanded to know.

Wyan looked away.

He studied the chipped and broken stone floor of the cell, truly wondering if he didn't belong here for what remained of his life.

Then his gaze rose up and he locked eyes with Alexander.

"I have lived for four decades already. At that age, it is not so easy for a man to change his ways. I am Tepest's chief inquisitor, there is no one more worthy, no one more capable than me to bear the title.

If it must be on my shoulders as a penance rather than a privilege it makes no difference." Wyan declared solemnly.

Alexander's eyes, both the human green one and the right one that was anything but watered with tears.

"No wonder your lives are so brief, no flame so strong can be long for this world." He reflected proudly.

Wyan waited for a moment, and then asked the question that he'd been thinking in the back of his mind since Alexander had revealed his true nature to him.

"Your name... it's not really Alexander Diamondclaw is it?" The inquisitor reflected.

"Not even close." The Fey who called agreed.

"What sort of name should I know you by then... while we are here in private?" Wyan inquired.

"My true name has a power to it that I am far from ready to share with you. Still, you may call me Mac Tíre Cáiliúil." Alexander offered.

Wyan considered the name for a moment and then nodded in understanding.

"You've done much to earn it." He agreed.

"You have no idea." Alexander declared with a smirk before he suddenly became more serious.

"So you see Wyan, we're not monsters. At the end of the day, we're just like you, some of us only wish to coexist peacefully... and some only want to see the world burn. You judgment must be able to tell one from the other. Let's have a test... which side of the divide do you think I fall on?" Alexander asked.

In response Wyan took Alexander's black gloved hand in his own his own bare ones.

"The same one I do, for good or ill." He responded.

There could have been no better answer.

XXX XXX XXX

"If Lorelei, Bryonna, Ivan, or anyone else has been kidnapped, you're going to be paying me a very large amount of money to get them back. If nobody's life is in mortal peril than congratulations, yours now officially is." Alexander Diamondclaw declared grumpily after being woken up far too soon for his liking.

"I know you don't have much time left in Viktal, even if you have a great deal of time to spend elsewhere..." Wyan began, before suddenly pausing for a moment to take a deep breath and get his thoughts in order.

"I wanted to close certain debts between us before you left Viktal.

After we talked yesterday, I thought about something that I had said to you after I nearly burned Bryonna. How this was all so much simpler back when I was just a simple woodsman's son, so I decided to act like one for a while. I went out into the forest, cut down a tree myself, and then made this..." Wyan explained before pressing a small cloth wrapped package into Alexander's hands.

He unwrapped it then stared in shock at what lay within.

"You know, there are places in the Core where wearing this would get me killed, like this very inn." Alexander couldn't help pointing out.

"Well, you've still got the letter that I gave you, and you still have my utmost confidence." Wyan reflected with wry smile.

It was a simple wooden carving with a string wrapped around it.

A simple wooden carving of a howling wolf with the words "Mac Tíre Cáiliúil" engraved in it.

"I've heard stories of people from the very distant land of Verbrek. I thought of those stories… and then I made this." He explained.

Alexander slid string around his neck, and pulled the inquisitor in for a hug.

XXX XXX XXX

Dear Dame Renier

This week I've realized that being good friends with someone means being able to keep secrets. Even if you have to keep secrets from the person you're friends with though, you can still never be afraid to share how you truly feel with that person. That and I spent the week in Tepest helping prove a girl innocent of consorting with Fey, before helping rescue a different girl who got kidnapped by Fey! It kept us all really busy to say the least.

PS: The people in Tepest have it really hard, having to live their lives while constantly afraid of the Fey and other monsters that might come out of the forest to attack them. The worst thing about it is that it makes me think about how they aren't the only ones who have to live life like that, I'm just glad you're doing everything you can to try and make the people of Richemulot lead safe happy lives!

PPS: The problem with Bastet being a real goddess is I can't wear my icon of her at times, but Alex's wolf effigy never bothers Mirri, life is so unfair at times isn't it?

PPPS: You know, if it wasn't for the entire Borca and Barovia and Nova Vassa being in the way Tepest could make a very good trading partner with Richemulot, still I encouraged at least some of the locals to consider moving, we don't have any problems with Fey and everyone in our cities can find houses like two or three times as large as those in Tepest!

Your Faithful Servant:

Longhair.

End Chapter

End Book.

AN: To make up for the fact that the last chapter was so delayed, here is this one much "too early"!

I've talked with an actual person who knows at least some Irish so hopefully my use of it here is better than most of what you end up seeing when it comes to foreign languages (yes Tepestani is beat for beat Irish from what I can tell from the examples of it in Gazetteer V (five)) and if you didn't know "Mac Tíre Cáiliúil" translates to "Famous Wolf."

Also this is probably the only hug we are ever likely to see Alex ever give anyone, (he might give some to Florence at some point if I'm not paying attention) so yes he likes Wyan's gift.


	12. Chapter 12

Monster Party Book Five Author Commentary.

So here we go again folks, it is time for me to write my thoughts on the adventure this story was based around (Servant of Darkness) and my overall thoughts on how my version of it came together chapter by chapter.

First of all let me say that I'm glad that this one unfolds a little more like a standard D&D adventure than Hour of the Knife (see Book 3) which felt like more like a mystery than a fantasy story. Hour of the Knife had lots of clues, witnesses, a false lead or two, though it was sadly lacking a good parlor scene where the investigator gathers all the suspects together in one room and then lays out the hows and whys of the criminal's plan and reveals their identity to everyone.

Not that there is anything wrong with doing a mystery novel in a D&D setting, it is just we only need to do it once, and the extremely cosmopolitan setting of Paridon makes a mystery investigation feel more "natural", since the technology level feels quite Sherlock Holmesish, at least in my interpretation of it.

No, Servant of Darkness is as I previously mentioned, a more straight up D&D adventure; there's a damsel that needs to be rescued and to you'll need to find a particular magical item to do it. Not only that, but to actually get the item, you'll have to jump through some hoops, investigate some ruins, fight some monsters, and so on and so forth.

So right out of the starting gate you might notice that our protagonists "look" (or at least are described) a little bit different than normal. The unspoken changes are as follows…

Alex: Dyed his normally silver hair blond and cut it short rather than wearing it long.

Devi: Wearing fake ears that Cal made for her and dyed her normally blue hair brown.

Florence: Completely shaved herself bald, and is wearing a sort of full body makeup/paint (made by Cal) to hide the her skin's green tint.

Mirri: Is wearing glasses with opaque lenses so no one can see her red eyes, has dyed the white streak that normally parts her hair black (so her hair is just black throughout), and wears the same sort of makeup/paint as Florence to hide how her pale her skin is.

James: Has adhesive on his hat to make sure that it doesn't accidentally come off revealing the cat ears he has beneath it.

Cal: Nothing. That's one of the jokes of the opening, for all that he complains about going into Tepest, he actually doesn't need to do anything himself, there's nothing about Cal's appearance that risks being dangerously off putting to the people of Tepest, even his alchemy is perfectly acceptable in Tepest.

Anyway, as you may have noticed up until this point/this book Alex and friends tend to look pretty different/weird in a lot of places that they go to. That said, since they're wandering adventurers they tend to get cut some slack because wandering adventurers are going to look weird/not be from around these parts, and they're clearly not worth the effort of making a fuss over when they just want to help/get paid for helping.

This isn't the case in Tepest.

In most other places an outsider rating of five or so will just mean you're getting side eyed by a lot of people, and it is best to let Alex who is "perfectly human", do the talking for the group.

In Tepest however, any noticeable outsider rating is going to end up earning you a long talk with the Inquisition. So to be able to investigate with any degree of freedom it's necessary for the group to take precautions.

Luckily the group is at least marginally aware of the general state of things in every nation in the Core, and so they aren't going into Tepest completely blind.

Then we have our first fight of the adventure story.

I very pointedly refrain from calling the monsters what they are (goblins) because goblins are the by default the mookiest of mooks (well them or kobolds) in D&D, and if they aren't expected to pose a challenge to a regular D&D party, what chance would they have against this group?

So to avoid letting that particular fact prejudice you readers I refrain from calling them goblins until the battle is over. Besides, these aren't regular goblins, they're Tepest Goblins, which means they probably have a slightly nastier template and a couple class levels (in fighter, but still class levels!) to make them more threatening.

If you have trouble figuring out why Alex doesn't approve of/like the sight of the wargs that the goblins are riding, well think about it and get back to me if you're still unsure.

Then we run into Ivan when he helps rescue (for a given definition of "rescue") the group from the goblin trap and he quickly explains himself.

Alex listens to him and promptly comes to the conclusion that the best thing he can do is to pummel Ivan so badly that he'll go unconscious.

Also shockingly early for one of these books, Alex takes off his eye-patch in the very first chapter! Granted the impact of the event is lessened because in keeping with the comic book like approach I have to writing these stories (IE write every one as if it is someone's first) I decide to be "coy" and not say what it is that Ivan sees when Alex's takes off his eye-patch.

Now, Alex is a tremendous jerk, but as we see in chapter two, it is not like he's actually wrong about anything that he says to Ivan.

Our protagonists are a motley crew who are only just barely managing to pass for humans thanks to lot of prepwork. If they're going to show up in Viktal and investigate Bryonna's case without ending up on the wrong side of the inquisition, they're going to need help. In this case Ivan can "help" by allowing them to "capture" him.

So once Alex has persuaded Ivan to go along with this plan, we promptly move onto what will be the main theme for this particular story, Alex lying to Wyan. Okay, I'm not sure if it is the "main theme" but it certainly feels that way.

At the very least, let use recall that Kurt Vonnegut expression that I am so fond of; "Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of." you all remember that one right?

The practical upshot/ rule of thumb in these Monster Party stories is that you can spot the main character of a given book by who is suffering most.

Thus, James Firecat is the main character of book one, Mikhail Zolnik is the main character of book two, Cal Wright is the main character of book three (since his emotional suffering outweighs what happens to Alex and James' olfactory senses), Mirri Catwarrior is the main character of book four, and Wyan of Viktal is the main character of book five.

I started out by hardening Wyan's heart a little, but only for the same reason that the actor who played Julian Bashir in Star Trek Deep Space Nine (it was Alexander Siddig if you're curious) started out by playing his character as an absolute twit, so that there would be more room for the character to grow and evolve over the course of the story.

As written in the Adventure Book if you needle/press Wyan enough during your first meeting with him, he'll actually admit that he has his own doubts about Bryonna's guilt and would be very grateful to the PCs for getting more evidence even if it proves her innocent. That obviously doesn't come across in chapter two, where it seems like he's pretty committed to Bryonna being guilty, though to his credit the evidence he's collected so far is all sort of leaning that way, even leaving aside any sort of parental favoritism.

I also changed something else about Wyan, in the adventure book/every other place he shows up Wyan, has levels in cleric. This "feels right" based on the fact that he is something of a religious leader for Tepest, but in D&D it also means he has magic powers.

In the 3.5 D&Dish style/system that these stories are written with at least a wink and a nod to, your magic is some of the best magic/class abilities (if you're sticking to purely "Core" then their only possible rival are Druids) out there.

I wanted to strip that from him, because Wyan's position in life shouldn't be about his ability to shoot beams of fire from his hands or heal people by touching them, it should be about the strength of his voice and how many people he has managed to talk into supporting his point of view/plans for how to protect Tepest. He can have magical priests who work for him, but Wyan himself is more interesting if we view him as a completely non-magical human.

After those two meet we get introduced to his daughter and if you didn't realize it, I was very careful when writing Lorelei and Alexander interacting.

First of all, short of Delphi back in the first book, Lorelei is the first young female character (falling in the range roughly of 18 to 25) we've run into in these stories. It felt like a good time to remind people that yes Alex is very pretty, he looks like Sephiroth by way of Big Boss.

It honestly would not have felt true to the characters /situations not to have Lorelei comment on the fact that she finds Alex attractive. Alex has a very high charisma score, he falls quite neatly into that "women want to have him, men want to be him" category.

Which is a bit ironic due to events that will come up later….

So, Alex who has to deal with this young girl (without Florence present to run interference for him) does some of the only suffering he'll do in this book. We see enough of Lorelei to hopefully get across the point that she's not accusing Bryonna purely out of spite, she genuinely believes that she was cursed, and if she is a little spoiled, she also has a good heart underneath it, otherwise she never would have tried to become friends with Bryonna in the first place.

After that meeting, Alex goes to visit Bryonna and as he is wont to do, insists on making a bad situation worse before he'll be able to make it better.

To his credit, I felt the entire "sneaking healing potion in through wet sock" thing at least does a good job establishing that just how crafty Alex is. We'll be seeing more and more of that as the story goes on, and it is important to build up to it rather than having it come out of nowhere (not that it really could possibly come out of nowhere unless you haven't read the other books) all of a sudden.

Her reaction to what she sees when Alex takes off his eye-patch helps eventually bookend the story when in the very last chapter Alex reveals his eye to Wyan, and while the inquisitor's reaction is more subdued, he comes to the exact same conclusion that Bryonna does.

Alex eventually manages to calm her down enough to gain some information about who the group should go talk to next to learn about Bryonna's past.

With that task accomplished, we move to chapter three.

Given that the group is clearly racing against the clock I felt it would have been irresponsible of them not to shell out a little cash in order to pick up some horses to help them get around Tepest faster. I went with five horses rather than six, because five is the number being listed as for sale in the Adventure Book, and I like to include neat little nods to otherwise minor facts in the Adventure Books as I write these things.

I also take a moment to establish why this is not going to be a Cal Wright story/why Cal will not be taking center stage in this novel despite the fact that it is based around a trial/defending someone from accusations.

Lamordia and Tepest's legal systems are way too different for Cal to be properly effective at the moment. Simply put, his brash and abrasive style is more likely to get him declared guilty of consorting with fey than it is to prove Bryonna's innocent. I hope this felt reasonably accurate and not a cop out to everyone who read it.

If you didn't already realize, how comfortable Cal feels in a domain tends to correlate with its technology level; Paridon: good, Vorostokov: bad, Dementlieu: good, Verbrek: bad, Nosos: good, Tepest: bad, you get the idea.

We get to meet Leobe who once the issue of his adopted daughter is brought up gives us more information (if not exactly more evidence) then helps direct them towards Rima. We also take a moment to discuss the nature of the woman who has claimed that she saw Bryonna transform and what sort of a "truth" Mirri was able to get out of her.

Which brings us to our meeting with Rima.

Alex starts out being very cautious with her, because once again Darklings are a thing, Vistana who are not living as part of a group might be that way because they've been kicked out.

In actuality, reading through the Ravenloft Monster Manuals in even more detail one can discover that Rima actually falls under the category/definition of a "Recluse", a lone Vistana who has gone off on her own to commune with the spirits of nature and thus are relatively benign so long as you don't do anything to openly insult them/earn their ire.

Alex walks a rather thin line with Rima by insisting that she show him her hands (a darkling's hands will be strangely colored twisted claws), but on the other hand (quite literally) once he takes off his own gloves and shows her the markings on his palm that buys him a bit more leeway.

Once again the nature of those markings will be revealed later, but they are entirely in keeping with established Ravenloft lore, and if you've read all the published Adventure Books you could probably guess what they are/how he got them.

This leads us to the card reading.

First of all, if you are at all surprised that when Rima ends up having the same cards show up multiple times, you shouldn't be/it should not break your sense of disbelief. Tarroka readings will frequently be repetitive so long as they're done for the same person for the same purpose.

In I Strahd: The War Against Azalin across decades (possibly even a century) Strahd keeps getting the same reading over and over again (that reading is: the Darklord, the Beast, the Necromancer, the Warrior, the Mercenary, the Horseman, and the Mists) every single time he gets his future read.

The unspoken truth of the card reading that she does for the group (and why those cards show up again) is that each of those six cards represent a member of the group.

James is the beast reversed, because the beast is the patron cards of all lycanthropes, but James has managed to harness (one might even say "leash") his animal instincts for the purpose of helping rather than destroying society. He now lives to hunt down those things that prey upon good/innocent people.

Mirri is the traitor reversed for many reasons. To start with the Traitor cards is appropriately connected to the chaotic evil alignment which matches Mirri's. Secondly, Mirri "betrays" the idea of evil as a unified force opposed by "good" (direct wide scale conflicts between "good" and "evil" is a concept that never really shows up much in Ravenloft honestly...) since she primarily hunts other evil monsters, even if it is only because she wants to be the last monster left standing when the dust clears.

Despite her alignment, she is quite committed to the group, and if the traitor card could be said to represent painful betrayal from one you trusted, then Mirri is quite appropriately the reverse, steadfast loyalty from one you have every reason to suspect.

Cal is represented by the guildsman card, like with the traitor card, it matches his alignment (True Neutral) and depicts Cal's personality, that for all he grouses and complains, he does believe in share and share alike, and sticks with the group through the good and bad, doing whatever he can to help in either sort of situation.

The druid card does not represent Florence as some of you may have expected, it is another true neutral card, it represents Devi. In particular it represents how Devi was able to free herself from events in her past which severely constrained her both physically and mentally.

What those events were is a story for another Book though.

Florence is the raven, mostly for reasons that I'm going to keep under my hat since they related to matters in her and Alexander's shared past that I'm not quite ready to reveal yet.

Alex is of course the darklord reversed.

Now, the third edition version of the Tarroka deck (but not the second edition) does have a card that more appropriately represents what the inverted darklord card sounds like it should stand for, it is called the Hero.

The picture provided of the Hero even goes so far as to have the hero depicted with a wolf's head (as one of four other animals granted) symbol on his shield.

That said, I'm still sticking with the Darklord Reversed as Alex's card because it play up the "there but for the grace of the Mists go I" aspect of his personality/past where he was headed in a very dark direction earlier in his life, but managed to turn things around (or "reverse" them you might say) later on.

We also start building on the concept of the different types of fey that exist. This will be important twice over, once for the fact that being already familiar with pixies and dryads (the later through Florence) we'll soon be meeting another type, the sirine. It also plays up the fact that Florence does not have a high opinion of shadow fey (to say the least), which will be fully brought to light in chapter nine, and be an important facet of her character in future stories.

Which brings up to chapter four and the group heading down to Castle Island to find out what happened to Aroun, since he evidently knows SOMETHING that can help them with their investigation, even if he doesn't actually know what it is at the moment.

I really did not intend to give Mirri as many/more fights scenes as Alex gets in a book that is supposedly centered around him, give or take my previous comments about this book being about Wyan.

It is just the way that the Adventure Book unfolds/the challenges it presents. In any situation where the bad guys make extensive use of: mind affecting abilities, poisons, diseases, or the undead, Mirri is naturally going to be the one who steps up to the plate.

That's just the plain and simple fact of the mater, she has these blanket immunities to certain things, and that's one of the big reasons why Alexander keeps her around. Her immunity to mind affecting abilities in particular is the reason she ends up dealing with the Lady of the Lake.

I've already said pretty much everything I need to say about her in my comments for this particular chapter. She (the Lady of the Lake) should have been more fleshed out in the Adventure Book, but the curse she lays on Mirri is taken directly from the Adventure Book, and Mirri's reaction to it flows naturally from her character/situation as a vampire.

The only other thing I could possibly bring up is, notice how in when dealing with an evil sylvan fey, (even a sylvan fey who was so evil that come third edition she got retconned into being a minor darklord) Florence's approaches her more in sorrow than anger.

A few chapters down the line while dealing with an evil shadow fey however, she'll shows levels of blood lust that would surprise Mirri!

As for exploring the Castle itself, there's not much to say.

There actually aren't any monsters to be fought here, it is just very atmospheric and you eventually find Eldark and Aroun's dead body.

In the Adventure Book proper, there's no happy ending possible for Eldark. If the Lady of the Lake is still alive, he'll remain so bespelled by her that he will eventually say the wrong thing to the wrong person and get killed for being in league with the fey. On the other hand, if you have killed the Lady of the Lake then his anger over what she did to him will cause him to become a serial killer who preys on women.

I'm not sure why the book bothered to list this stuff out, since it happens so far down the line that it isn't going to affect the story either way. Honestly they're more like dread possibilities than anything else, but the lack of a "good" or at least "less bad" alternative rankles me a bit.

I know Ravenloft is supposed to be dark, but it is supposed to be dark with some light at the end of the tunnel. That light gives you something to fight and struggle for. If you don't have any light at all in your setting, then it is not dark, it is Warhammer 40K. Not only that, but your attempts to be atmospheric are doomed to devolve into people making fun of your attempts to be CREEEEEEEEEDD serious.

So the group finds Eldark, Mirri does what she can with her mental powers to possibly help him have a slightly brighter future and so closes chapter four.

Chapter five takes us back to Rima, who does another card reading for us. If you were curious, the four cards that are revealed in this reading are as follows, the torturer, the reversed monk, the necromancer, the thief, and the puppet. None of these cards are especially good things to have show up in a reading.

The reading she does for the Three Sisters is the temptress, the mists, and the innocent reversed. Once again, not promising cards.

So yeah, once the reading with her is done, we're off to go meet the Three Sisters, because heaven forbid we have an adventure in a Domain that doesn't have us bumping up against the local darklord at some point!

I'm not saying the Three Sisters don't serve an important function in this Adventure Book as written, but I will say there have to be at least a dozen other sort of quests/situations that could lead to the heroes getting some Tincture of Midnight. There's nothing about the Three Sisters that make them the sole possible source for it, even if their interest in potions does make them a good source for it. I say this by comparison to Book Three, where Sodo's history makes him the simple, obvious, and really only choice for a doppelganger who would be willing to help (for a given definition of 'help') the PCs track down Bloody Jack.

That in turn goes hand in hand with my general feelings about the Three Sisters, they're not really all that interesting. Despite everyone's best efforts, I don't think I've ever seen a version of them/their back-story (be it cannon or fannon) that really grabbed me. They just can't seem to move beyond being the stereotypical evil fairy tail witches who hate beauty and happiness and cook children alive to eat them and so on and so forth.

It doesn't help that in all honestly I (and possibly other people, I could be wrong) probably have a fair amount of trouble telling the sisters apart personality wise, they all seem to just be equal parts bitter and conniving.

So, not only do the three sisters never rise above the level of a stereotype, that stereotype has to be spread across three different characters, making each of them blander still!

I think the chief problem with the Three Sisters is that I never get the feeling that their suffering is "soul deep" for lack of a better way. Compare it to how Gregor Zolnik wants so badly to be a hero, but is also so in love with the power of being a wolf that he keeps alienating/killing those who he wishes would honestly support him.

The three sisters don't even reach the level of Malken, who (at least in my opinion) has a wonderful elegance in his simplicity by being effectively the entire Joker/Batman dynamic made flesh in "one" person.

The three sisters are no more, and no less than a stereotype. I'd deeply love it if someone could figure out some way to make them appropriately interesting, but it is a task that I'm not up to. So, in my story they'll play their stereotypical role, we'll get another hole punched in our "meet the local darklord" card and they'll help move the story along.

Alex is careful to follow Rima's instructions about showing them neither fear nor disrespect and our protagonists get their mission to retrieve a stolen ring.

That takes us into chapter six.

After some ominous warnings we eventually manage to track down the "goblin vampire" and Florence dispatches it, showing off her magical prowess in combat again.

It is worth noting that Florence's fighting style differs from the others; beyond the fact that she has magic to work with (Devi has a little of that through some artifacts, but Florence is the only one who has levels in a class (one might argue one of the best classes in fact) that grants spells), when I'm writing James, Mirri or Alex fighting I tend to focus on how fast /speedy they are.

When I'm writing Florence fighting, she won't move with blinding speed, she'll move fast enough to not get killed by her foe, but I feel there's a sense of methodical power about the way she handles/duels with the Goblin Vampire.

If you've played Arkham Knight (and if you like Batman why haven't you?) think back to (or even if you haven't played the game/don't want to/can't, instead just use youtube "arkham knight poison ivy introduction" will do the trick) Poison Ivy's introduction in that game.

That particular scene resonated pretty much perfectly with how I was envisioning Florence's movements in combat. There's nothing rushed or hurried about it, there doesn't need to be, nature always wins, she'll move at her own pace and reach the outcome she desires as surely as a glacier will reach the sea.

Anyway, moving on, once the Goblin Vampire is dealt with, we've got the ring back. The unspoken fact that everyone but James is realizing is that the Three Sisters want the Ring of Regeneration for the purpose of keeping their victims alive while they eat them. That, and given how regeneration works in D&D, it is entirely possible that they want the ring to bring dead people back to life, because where is the fun in devouring someone if they aren't able to squirm while you do it?

That's the reason that Alex refrains from bringing them a dead goblin, because he realizes that a dead goblin plus the ring of regeneration equals a live goblin….

Now the adventure as written gets a major black mark from me at this point. As written, there are pretty much two possible outcomes for how the PCs can end up getting the Tincture of Midnight: the heroes can give the sisters a goblin, or they can give up one of the PCs.

If they do the former then they're going to take dark powers checks (even goblins don't deserve to be eaten alive over and over again and you're directly making it happen to them), if they do the later then that PC is going to suffer horribly and take several madness checks assuming the Sisters are willing to let them going after they've been eaten and regenerated half a dozen times or so.

There's also some "fluff" about how if the PCs can turn the Three Sisters against each other then they might be able to get away with the Tincture while the Sisters argue and thus not take Dark Powers Checks.

See my earlier comments about no win situations and how I don't like them.

Granted at least this one openly admits that there is a third "better" option, but it defines the possibility far too nebulously. I came up with the idea of a riddle competition based on information from the Darklords supplemental book, which has a full section on the Three Sisters. Reading it will tell you a lot more about their powers, back-story, and methods, though it still fails to really flush out their characters/personalities.

Said section mentions how the Three Sisters are fond of riddle competitions and even gives some example riddles. Said example riddles are the first three that they ask, and given that two of them, four legs in morning and horses on a hill) are incredibly well known (by the definition of "I knew them) I read between the lines and figured that Tepest being the backwater domain that it is, the Sisters tend to ask somewhat ancient and well known riddles.

By comparison, Alex throws them a real poser right out of the gate which while not impossible to guess by any means, is a riddle that I doubt any of you have heard before/would obviously know the answer to.

When Alex sees how they react to this riddle (giving him a bullshit answer delivered with an equal mix of blind conviction and the unspoken threat of attacking if he doesn't accept it) he's somewhat less than impressed. At that point he decides to break into a cascade of as many incredibly lewd riddles as he can. He spends the next few riddles waiting for the Three Sisters to catch onto the fact that he's doing the verbal equivalent of grabbing his crotch and thrusting his hips at them with every question he asks.

I am especially proud of the very final riddle that he asks, simply because it is a new take on a riddle competition that I don't think I've ever seen used before in any story be it serious or parody. I steal/reference/homage a lot of stuff but every now and then I somehow manage to think up something original!

Since all you can typically win from a riddle competition with the Three Sisters is time (if you can last until the sun rises they'll typically retreat back to their cottage since sunlight causes them physical pain) Alex is effectively filibustering the Three Sisters, telling them an incredibly long and convoluted riddle and buying time for the rest of his team to locate the Tincture of Midnight.

When he finally finishes up his riddle we then transfer right back into the land of stealing/referencing/homaging greater works than my own. In this case the "Argument Clinic" sketch from Monty Python, as our hero and the villains debate what is and is not a riddle. Alex is technically correct (the best kind of correct!) since the definition of the word is (based on Merriam Webster dictionary) is "a mystifying, misleading, or puzzling question posed as a problem to be solved or guessed" after all.

In this case, the sheer length of the riddle makes it far more complicated (or "misleading") then it needs to be, as I'm sure he included plenty of facts that have no bearing on the final question at end of it.

Either way with that riddle and his behavior after it, I feel that Alex more than earns the title of "Alexander Trollenclaw" which I gave him in the author notes at the end of this chapter.

So chapter seven.

There are two distinct parts to this chapter, the first is of course the near burning of Bryonna. Alexander's comment to her before her tosses the stake she'd tied to is a reference to back when he was forced to "heft the arbor" in Forlorn, which he mentions in the Nosos Novella I promise I'll finish at some point, though it may not be some point this year.

I feel his his bluff with the Inquisitors is quite reasonable. You're typically allowed to use/do Magic in Tepest, so long as you're able to effectively convince everyone who saw you do it that your magic comes from Belenus/one of his fellow good Gods. Luckily since Belenus is a sun deity it is not exactly a huge leap to associate magical dealing with resiting fire to him.

In reality of course Florence has probably just laid down some Resist/Protection From spells (probably with a permanency buff also) on his clothing.

In theory the Boowray is supposed to escape after one round of the heroes getting a chance to attack it, so it should have gotten away when Cal's first bullet completely failed to hurt it since it is immune to weapons that aren't enchanted, meaning Cal should have gotten a chance to use one of his "magic bullets" against it.

In practice, I'm shuffling around the group's actions in a way that makes things more interesting, IE Cal gets two actions because no one else does anything. If I had to obey the rules as written then Florence probably would have just used kelpstrand to grapple the Boowray before insisting that she's a priestess of Brigantia. Brigantia is Belenus' consort and the goddess of wild forests, beasts, domestic animals, and cultivated fields, so magic dealing with plant-life should be right up her alley.

Moving on to the other half of the chapter, we get to have a nice long discussion between Alex and Wyan. Over the course of said conversation Wyan repeatedly bares larger and larger portions of his soul and Alex repeatedly lies, lies, tells the truth a little, then goes right back to lying.

Okay it is really more like 50/50, but the fact remains that he's hiding some pretty fundamental truths about himself, like how he knows that Florence is a Child of Spring and if he isn't one himself, it is only because he's a Child of Autumn.

Not that Alex is doing this to be mean or out of malicious intent, it is just that he really doesn't have much of a choice in the mater. Like he said back at the start of the book, "sometimes the places that need us most want us least" which is rarely more accurate than in Tepest.

What this conversation exists to establish is that despite the heavy negative connotations that the word "Inquisitor" carries (for well deserved reasons), Wyan is not a stereotypical inquisitor.

He is not about forcing his religion on anybody (granted, people may be considered more suspicious than normal if they're not worshiping Belenus, but that rather goes hand in hand with them not being from around Tepest, so it is more xenophobia than anything religious based) he's not trying to get rich, he's not trying to amass secular power (in fact Gazetteer Five makes it crystal clear that he's doing everything he can to avoid having his inquisition gain secular/political power), he's not trying to boost his own ego or make a name for himself, Wyan is entirely genuine when he says that his goals are to protect the human residents of Tepest.

It is never expressly said in story (because it is not something the characters would be aware of) but both Servant of Darkness and Gazetteer V list what Wyan's alignment is, and it is the same in both cases….

Chaotic Good.

Yeah.

He is granted an entirely different kind of Chaotic Good than Alex is, but alignments are broad like that, after all there's room for both Mirri and Tristessa in Chaotic Evil.

The great irony of this entire book is that while Alex lacks any sort of "sense alignment" powers (besides, said powers only work to detect along the "chaotic to lawful axis" in Ravenloft) he can tell that Wyan is a kindred spirit.

Sadly the only way he can repay Wyan's kindness/friendship is a mountain of lies with a few tiny pebbles of truth sprinkled in here and there, while hopping that the power of his benevolent actions will speak louder. Well Alex being Alex, and his thoughts on words being what they are (see Book Four) he is certain that they will. On the other hand, he has no way of knowing if Wyan would agree with him or that front.

So in the interest of helping Wyan he sets out to go track down Lorelei and those who kidnapped her. Just not till after telling Wyan one more great big lie (of course) so that he can get some private time in Lorelei's cell where he can transform to wolf form and fully memorize her scent.

That done, the group heads out on the most obvious course, finds out that it is the wrong one, then doubles back a little and heads out the other most likely direction with more success.

I still think that "traveling at the speed of plot" is the only way that this section of the Adventure Book makes any sense.

Loht is a Shadow Fey and he has no special protection against the sun, and there's no mention of him having a horse. So, he should only feel comfortable moving around during eight hours or so that the sun is down, and need to find some place safe to hide from sun up to sun down.

Which means that if he captured Lorelei at something like midnight (or even 11:00 PM) he can only move get in six or seven, maybe eight at most hours of travel.

The heroes will probably find out about him and Lorelei being gone around six. Give them an hour to prepare, and they leave at around seven.

Somehow despite the prospect of them being on horseback, they will fail to travel as far in eight hours (3:00 PM still too early for Loht to move about again) as Loht was able to go on foot while dragging/carrying a hostage.

This just doesn't make sense.

I can only assume that Loht must have some sort of "longstride" magic that lets him move much faster on foot than he should be able to, but still I wish someone could provide me with a timeline that makes sense because otherwise "travel at the speed of plot" is the only answer possible..

Also later on down the line I'm assuming that Loht us on purpose playings things close to the sunrise/doesn't go into Mount Lament until the sun is up rather than doing it at night while the heroes sleep. That may seem crazy, but actually there's a reasonable enough explanation for this one. It's because he can't be perfectly certain that Tristessa won't have one of her rare flashes of lucidity and recognize him, and so doesn't want to approach her when her "keen" (he cry/wail) is at its most powerful.

But lets put that particular problem aside and move on with the story and the adventure.

Mirri sees one of the Black Troopings, which I'll admit tend to only show up when a lot of Shadow Fey are meeting an untimely death and coming back into existence as undead. Ghee I sure hope nothing is happening in the Shadow Rift right now which could perfectly explain why a bunch of Shadow Fey are being killed….

Then a group of Widderibhinn (gesundheit) which is the Ravenloft name for undead incorporeal fey (can be shadow or sylvan I believe) directly under Tristessa's command (the Black Trooping is made up of Widderibhinn also, but they do not start obeying Tristessa until they "physically" (for an incorporeal creature at least) travel all the way to Mount Lament first) run into the group.

Mirri tries her best to be diplomatic, but Tristessa's servants are only interested in retrieving their queen's lost child, and that's not something Mirri (or anyone else) can really help with, so a fight breaks out. Our heroes win it and that wraps up chapter eight.

Then we go into chapter nine.

Chapter nine lets us see the end result of the way Alex has been pushed since chapter eight, and also what happens when you seriously get on the wrong side of Florence Bastien.

It is also the chapter where those of you who have read the Adventure Book may notice that I did something completely different from how the Adventure Book was written.

That there are two passages leading into Mount Lament is correct, but both of them are supposed to lead the party to the exact same eventual end destination, a showdown with Tristessa and Loht who still has Lorelei with him as a hostage.

I decided not to do this for a fairly simple reason; in setting up the Shadow Rift adventure that follows, this one has a rather weak climax. Loht MUST get away with the Sword of Arak, and Tristessa is… well Tristessa. All of which means that the climax of the adventure is likely to see neither of them properly punished/killed. Granted, you could argue that Tristessa honestly could not be suffering anymore than she already is….

Anyway, this may end up leaving your players feeling let down because while they managed to rescue Wyan's daughter, but they did nothing at all in regards to keeping Loht from doing… whatever it is he's trying to do.

So, I created "Onyx" as another Sith Shadow Fey who is intended to be Loht's chief manservant/mercenary (his "Busey" in Leverage terminology), so that by killing him off we were able to get something closer to proper closure.

With him dead Alex and friends can make a convincing argument that not only did they manage to rescue Lorelei, but they also killed (quite permanently) an evil shadow fey who otherwise would have gone on to spread who knows how much misery.

In short, the heroes have a right to pat themselves on the back when all is said and done even if Loht managed to get away.

Oh, and by not having Lorelei in the room with Loht and Tristessa, we manage to have her get rescued by the member of the group who is the most emotionally invested in rescuing her (Alex) and also neatly side step the issue of how she survives Tristessa eventual keen/wail.

Okay that second one is not really as important of an issue, because the chapter takes place during the daytime, which means her vocal attack should only induce paralysis rather than death in living things that are exposed to it.

Anyway back to the interaction between Alex and Onyx.

There is a hidden "joke" to how the two greet each other.

The "riddle" that Onyx tells, or at least the answer he gives comes from the Riddler in Arkham Asylum during one of his interview tapes. It also perfectly matches the Sith interest in gallows humor since they exist to study death and so gallows humor is the only kind of humor they have any interest in. The riddle that Alex responds with is in turn one the Riddler tells in Batman Earth One (Volume Two). So let nobody say that at least I'm not capable of pulling my references from many different incarnations of the same Batman character!

As for the fight itself, Alex plays off the fact that while the rapier is a very swift and elegant weapon, it just doesn't have the raw killing power of a longsword. To slay someone instantly with one thrust of a rapier (based on my less than complete lack of research into the mater, if someone else knows better please speak up) you basically need to get drive your blade through their heart.

There are other possible "mortal blows" that may be sure to kill someone, but they won't do so for a while, and against someone with Alex's constitution/regenerative abilities they won't kill at all. So Alex basically goads Onyx into overcomitting into a well struck but non-decisive stab, so that he can then use his greater strength (your average Sith is only strength 11, granted Loht is strength 17 so lets assume that Onyx is probably something like a respectable but not outstanding strength 14) to grapple Onyx.

Now, as written, there are no restrictions at all on the Sith ability to transform into shadow, in theory they can do it even when there are no shadows at all/they are in a perfectly illuminated area.

That strikes me as a bit too perfect of a "villain exit stage left" power honestly. It makes Sith quite literally "unkillable" (for a proper shadow fey definition of "kill") unless you can take them someplace where there are no shadows/shade at all around for long enough that even moving at max speed as an incorporeal shadow they still end up getting cooked by the sun, and that is a situation that fells more absurdly complicated than most of the rituals/hoops you have to jump through to completely kill of a darklord!

Well, that or you use energy drain on them, but Mirri isn't there at the moment/most groups won't have access to unlimited amounts of that.

So instead, I went with the perfect illumination restriction above, and the same sort of problem that vampires vulnerable to sunlight (not Mirri) and Half-Shadow Fey have, when directly exposed to sunlight they loose their special abilities and have to find a mundane way to get someplace safe.

Thus Alex is able to simply grapple Onyx into the sunlight long enough for it to cook him (even if the weak sunlight of Keening is doing it at a rate of one hit point a round) rather than needing some sort of complicated ritual/spell that allow Alex or some other member of the group to grapple a literal shadow. Such a thing may actually exist in D&D since it often seems like there is a spell for everything, but I'm not aware of this one off the top of my head.

Anyway we get to see Alex and Florence do their thing and that moves us onto chapter ten.

First James pulls out a new magical item. I'd be willing to bet that this being Ravenloft and magical items being appropriately Gothic, the rock he uses is probably designed solely for use by lycanthropes and provides only enough light for those with animal keen senses to see by.

Not because I'm trying to make an artifact that is super useful for James, but because it honestly feels like that is the sort of magical item that would exist in Ravenloft and be used to help werewolves hunt on moonless nights, though of course James is putting it to a more noble purpose.

Together the pair defeat the Wraith Spider, and Mirri finds the gem of true seeing.

I am a little upset by how this works in the Adventure Book, since finding this gem is sort of important to reaching the "best" possible ending to the adventure (making Tristessa turn on Loht) and you need to go through the "wrong" entrance to Mount Lament (the entrance that doesn't have Loht's tracks leading to it) to find it.

On the other hand, I suppose one could also view it is a reward for you doing your job as a D&D protagonist and fully exploring every dungeon you enter since the two passages are linked and its not especially hard to discover the Wraith Spider's web and treasure even if you go in the "correct" passage.

With that gem in hand (or in pocket) James and Mirri end up hearing Loht and Tristessa discussing the sword that Loht wants and the Eye of Vhaeraun, which of course Tristessa ends up seeing as her lost child.

Mirri interrupts the exchange, and promptly falls under the spell of the Eye just like Tristessa. Well, she sort of falls under it at least. Despite the Eye doing everything in its power to convince her (even going so far as to mimic a heartbeat, which is a buff for it since in the Adventure Book it isn't described as having the power to create auditory illusions) it can't overwhelm her mental processes to the point of making her ignore the obvious problems with this particular illusion.

Mirri probably would have been much more easily convinced /enthralled for a longer period of time if the Eye actually had shown up as vial of blood, but on the other hand how exactly do you visually convey "this blood belong to Strahd Von Zarovich" to someone? Well a label would be the obvious answer, but would you really trust a label like that?

The entire illusion really starts to fall apart for Mirri as she sees Tristessa interacting with the Eye in a manner that makes sense based on what she is seeing, but makes no sense at all based on what Mirri is seeing.

In short, much like that fancy screen the heroes used in Mission Impossible Ghost Protocols, any "perfect" illusion which is trying to be equally "perfect" for several different people at the same time, is pretty much doomed to fall apart fairly quickly.

If you expect two people to share the exact same Lotus Eater Machine delusion, and yet the two have different personalities/ideas on what is desirable, no simulation can perfectly accommodate both of them, especially if they can talk/interact with one another and become aware of what the other is experiencing.

So Mirri is aware enough that she's under an illusion spell that it shatters instantly once she bothers to make physical contract with her new gem of true seeing.

Tristessa takes hold of the gem next, gets snapped completely out of the illusion, and goes from believing perfectly in the Eye to seeing it as it really is in one moment, and does not take it well. Not that Tristessa tends to take any surprises well.

The only reason she was willing to have a semi-lucid conversation with Mirri before attacking is that as mentioned previously, while Tristessa has a deep seated hatred for all living people/things, she is slightly (slightly) more reasonable when dealing with her fellow undead. She's still insane and delusional, but she's less violent at least.

It's entirely possible that holding the gem of True Seeing for a few moments also reminded her of what she was… well "truly seeing" at the moment, that Loht was the one responsible for her death and her being separated from her child (because said child also died but Tristessa is unlikely to ever realize/remember/admit that) in the first place.

If not, well him simply trying to pawn the Eye off on her as her missing child is plenty of reason for her to try and scream him to death.

Tristessa's cry is a constitution based save that does not effect objects (she can't scream metal into shattering) which means it falls quite squarely into the category of "things undead are immune to" which is why it washes over Mirri without doing more than slightly mussing her hair, even as Tristessa's own spiders are dropping left, right, and center.

Loht resists the paralization effect of the cry, but it still gives him some disfiguration, which I included both because it felt realistic, and because it is yet more evidence to put in the "the heroes actually accomplished something" side of the scale in regards to this half of the adventure.

None the less, he manages to steal the Sword of Arak and escape, then Mirri manages to talk Tristessa into letting her and her friends track down Loht.

Granted it is a bargain that Mirri doesn't exactly intend to live up to (chaotic evil) but on the other hand Tristessa is so crazy (chaotic evil) that even if Mirri did live up to her end of the deal, she (Tristessa) probably wouldn't remember making the bargain in the first place.

Mirri manages to escape from Tristessa's presence without needing to fight her… only to get glomped/pounced by James who also has failed his will save (as he is wont to do) against the Eye and now sees it as the thing that he desires most, which is roughly the same size as the Eye.

James being James, said thing is actually something for Mirri (James doesn't see Mirri in bat form because Mirri in bat form has no distinguishing features to make her look different than any other bat, not to mention the Eye probably senses that the matryoshka doll like nature of that illusion (person X holding a smaller version of themselves) would cause it to fall apart immediate from sheer contradiction), creating an almost quasi Gift of the Magi situation between the two of them.

With that heartwarming moment over and done with we move onto the epilogue.

By this point Lorelei is so traumatized from her kidnapping by Loht and torture by Onyx that she's clearly failed a madness check (assuming she didn't already fail one after the boowray was exposed and fled) at this point. That's sort of a good thing (temporarily) in the sense that it has left her passively detached from what is going on around her.

That's why she doesn't raise too much of a fuss over the concept of riding a talking a silver furred wolf (or seeing that wolf transform into a man and back again), or the obvious magic of Florence uses to bind her arm replacing her lost sling.

There are ways to recover from madness checks (mostly you just need to sit around with friends and family making sure do anything dangerous or super out of the ordinary, though as with all things in D&D magic can help a lot) so given a few months of not being being mentally manipulated or kidnapped by fey and there are good chances that Lorelei will be able to recover.

Of course before she's able to babble all the stuff that she's seen the group do, Alex needs to talk to Wyan again and head that particular conversation off at the pass/break the news to him as gently as possible.

We also get to see a little bit more proof just of how right Florence was when she mentioned that Alex is sub par as a human being but nearly divine as a wolf (see Nosos side story) in how this chapter starts out.

Alex directly says to Lorelei "why should I lie to you?" and tells her nothing but the truth as a wolf.

Once he gets back into human shape and has a conversation with her father though….

Well lets just say that, even when Alex wants to be truthful, he still ends up spending a fair part of this conversation lying. If he wanted to have a genuine sylvan fey talk to Wyan about the importance of not hating all fey and how they can do good things for humans, he could have brought Florence along with him after all. His own ego, (well his ego and the relationship he's already built with Wyan) drives him to handle that particular matter himself instead.

Wyan takes the news well or at least as "well" as anyone possibly could.

Alex tries to do what he can to at least correct some of Wyan's assumptions, reassure him that he really is trying to do the right thing/there are unquestionably people in Tepest who would be doing a much worse job than he is.

Alex's "reveal" is done in almost the exact same manner/paraphrases Matt Engarde's finally displaying his true nature in Phoenix Wright Justice for All, from "consult with myself" to the reveal of previously hidden eye, the only thing that is missing is a glass of liquor for him to swirl.

This is of course hardly the first time I've put famous villain lines in the mouthes of our protagonists, back in Book 3 Cal used from lines from Hans Gruber when addressing the doppelganger party guests.

I decided to do this because from Wyan's point of view discovering that Alex isn't actually human is an unpleasant and horrifying a discovery as " _The Polito form is dead, insect_ ", or " _The name's Frank Fontaine._ ", or "Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt." or, well you get the idea I don't think I need to quote any more "shock" games.

Alex does everything he can to talk Wyan through the discovery and though he doesn't tell Wyan his real name, he does at least give him a "better" name to know him by in private.

Oh and if you weren't aware of the irony yet… go back and look at how many times Alex has used the phrase "XXXX or my name isn't Alexander Diamondclaw" in the words/thoguhts of the Janitor from Scrubs "I do love to lie!"

The way that Wyan responds with his eventual "gift" is, well…. though Wyan claims to be influenced by travelers from Verbrek, in actuality what he does can best be understood through superstition that is much closer to home.

In Verbrek humans will sometimes create small simple effigies of various herbivores out of twigs taking the time to twist one of the faux animal's legs (signifying that it has been wounded/is easy prey) before leaving it out as an attempt to appease the Wolf God.

In Tepest when you're done a good turn by a Fey (yes it can/does happen), local Tepestani superstition says that unless you want them to soon do you a very bad turn, you MUST do something for that Fey. Not something of equal value or importance, that would suggest some kind of contract, and fey hate contracts or feeling like they actually HAVE to do something.

Still, you should at least do SOMETHING nice for the Fey in question to show that you appreciate their actions. It should be something material and not just money because Fey don't need money the way that mortals do.

So, Wyan personally chops down a tree, crafts the wood into a splendid wolf effigy, then engraves it with the "harmlessly accurate" title that Alex told him to use.

Alex in turn takes the small gift from Wyan in the spirit that it is offered and does what he can to reassure the inquisitor that he understands and wants him to know that things are "square" between them.

That and as I may have mentioned in a few other places, Alex isn't exactly the humblest of heroes, so he understandably does appreciate having offerings…. well offered up to him.

Alex's new trophy may show up now and again in future works much like James' mask from back in Book 4, though granted, unlike the mask it doesn't have any magical powers.

And with that we're finally done here, hope you enjoyed Book 5 of Monster Party!


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